by Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
Never before have so many creative hands touched a single quilt.
Brooks Crossing elementary media specialist Laura Tom, a few parents and the school’s students have created what can only be described as a literary masterpiece, made completely out of cloth.
Ms. Tom spearheaded an effort to create a quilt featuring three dozen square patches signed and decorated by famous children’s authors.
”We started in March 2006, for Read Across America day on Dr. Seuss’ birthday,” Ms. Tom said.
The school had children in different grades write letters to popular children’s authors. The authors were asked to sign a piece of cloth — sent by the students —and decorate it as they wanted, and return it to the school. Slowly but surely the pieces of fabric began to return to the school, from writers like R.L. Stein, author of the Goosebumps series, and Beverly Cleary, author of “Ramona.”
”It was really exciting when we started to get them back,” Ms. Tom said. “It took a long to time finally put the quilt together because we waited for a long time to get all the pieces back we could.”
The quilt has 36 different author patches on it, in a 6-by-6 format. The trim is green, a school color.
Much of the sewing work was done by two Brooks Crossing mothers, Kimberly Hryc and Wendy Weiss.
”There were more parents when we started, but they dropped out one-by-one,” Ms. Hryc joked. “It was my first quilt, so I had to look up a lot of the information on how to do the sewing.”
Ms. Weiss said the two worked on the quilt throughout much of the summer.
”We got the kids together in the backyard about once a week while we worked on it, but by the end of the summer it was getting to be twice a week,” Ms. Weiss said. “It felt good when we finished.”
Principal Gary Abbamont said his school is lucky to have such a unique piece. He said he is always happy to see parents getting involved in the school.
”It’s great to see the Brooks Crossing community together,” he said.
Mr. Abbamont said the school would likely keep the quilt behind a glass case to preserve it. He said it would be kept in a place where it could be easily seen.

