Charlie Needs a Cloak by Tomie dePaola. Prentice-Hall (1973); ISBN 0131283553; 32 Pages
"Charlie was a shepherd. He had a cozy house, a big hat, a crook, and a flock of fat sheep. But everyone said, "Charlie needs a cloak."
A hardworking shepherd named Charlie needs to replace his tattered, old red cloak. Beginning in the spring he shears his sheep and washes and cards the wool. Throughout the year, with the "help" of a particularly pesky sheep, he continues the process of making his cloak. He spins and dyes the yarn, weaves the yarn into cloth and sews the fabric. Finally, as winter sets in, Charlie is ready to tend his herd wearing his brand-new, beautiful red cloak.
This dePaola classic is still in print for several reasons. First of all, it's hilarious! The reason Charlie's cloak is tattered is because his silly sheep keep chewing on it. One of his sheep isn't very happy about getting sheared and spends the rest of the story trying to take his wool back. Then there's an illustrated side story of a little mouse that steals various items and places them in a tree stump. My son so enjoys pointing out the funny mouse! Another reason that this book is a classic is because it has educational value. The process of turning wool into cloth is one that most children probably don't understand. While the hand techniques Charlie uses aren't practiced much anymore, the book still provides a very interesting historical overview of the process and introduces children to terms such as shear and card. If your kids are like mine, they'll want to read it over and over again.
Tomie dePaola Website"Charlie Needs a Cloak" Storytelling Patterns [Arkansas Department of Human Services]
Captioned Media Program "Charlie Needs a Cloak" Lesson Plan
Weston Woods "Charlie Needs a Cloak" Viewing Activities
In the story, Charlie uses pokeweed berries (a.k.a. inkberry) to dye the wool yarn. As far as I know, we don't have any pokeweed plants nearby, plus all parts of the pokeweed plant are poisonous, making them a poor choice for a children's dyeing project. Because we wanted to match the books and dye our cloth red, we instead decided to try using cranberries for our natural dye. The kids used scraps of an old t-shirt and banded the fabric with rubber bands to make a tie-dye pattern. We boiled the cranberries in water and briefly submerged the banded cloth. The cranberry dye makes a dark reddish-pink color.
My daughter was disappointed the dye didn't make her cloth deep red like the color of the cranberries. Perhaps if we had let the cloth soak longer, the color would have been a little darker. I'm not sure how this dye would hold up to repeated laundering. Perhaps we'll have to try dyeing an actual t-shirt later this year using natural dye. If anyone has successfully dyed clothing with natural dye, please comment with any tips.
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