The Promise Basket

From award winning author Bill Richardson and highly acclaimed illustrator Slavka Kolesar comes a beautiful story about the love between a mother and daughter where a promise makes the perfect gift.

A stone when it’s thrown can damage, can break,
but nothing can shatter the promise I make.

So begins the poem a mother writes on a scrap of paper. She wraps the paper around a stone and places it in a basket to give to her daughter on her first birthday. They are poor, but the mother is determined that gifts will be given when gifts need giving. She keeps her promise, and the Promise Basket, too.

Every time there is a need for gifts, the mother finds a pretty stone to tie up with paper and ribbon, and gives it to her daughter in the basket. She continues the tradition over the years until her daughter has a baby of her own…

The love between a mother and her daughter is celebrated in this lyrical story from Bill Richardson, featuring colorful illustrations by Slavka Kolesar.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5
Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2
Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.