The Promise Basket

A mother lives alone with her baby daughter in a tiny apartment. And while she has little money, she wants to give her daughter all that she can. The day before her daughter’s first birthday, she finds a beautiful pink stone on the beach and a discarded basket by the trash. She wraps up the stone in a scrap of a paper, ties a ribbon around it, and places it in the basket that she calls the “Promise Basket”. She gives the basket and the gift to her daughter on her birthday, reading what she wrote on the paper:

A stone when it’s thrown can damage, can break,
but nothing can shatter the promise I make.
This stone and this promise are all I can give:
I’ll love you each day for as long as I live.

She continues to give her daughter a stone wrapped up in a promise for significant events in her life. The first two lines of the promise remain constant, with the second and third line changing for each occasion. For instance, when the daughter has her heart broken as a teenager, her mother’s promise reads:

A stone when it’s thrown can damage, can break,
but nothing can shatter the promise I make.
Dark times might fight us, but always they end.
I’m here and I love you and heartbreak will mend.

When her granddaughter is born, the mother gives her daughter the promise basket full of rocks and promises. The grandmother also has a new stone wrapped up, but this time the paper is blank. The daughter knows it is now her turn to write promises to her own daughter.

Slavka Kolesar’s illustrations add another dimension to the story. In the illustrations, she uses a metaphor of a tree taking root in the mother’s heart, and the tree of life grows as the little girl ages. When the girl is older, birds fly away from the tree because, as the mother says, “You’re ready to fly.” When the mother meets her granddaughter, the tree is lush, full of birds, and illustrations of mother/daughter moments. The symbolism of love using the colour red is also featured throughout the book. The tree, the cheeks of the mother, daughter, and granddaughter, and the ribbon tied around the stone, all being red, give the illustrations a warm feeling.

The repetitious chorus and the sentimentality of loving a child unconditionally from birth to adulthood give The Promise Basket a similar tone and feeling to Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. If you enjoy Love You Forever, you will probably also enjoy The Promise Basket. However, if you find this style of story too maudlin, you would probably want to pass on The Promise Basket. Also, like Love You Forever, The Promise Basket would likely be more appreciated by parents than children themselves. The Promise Basket would make a lovely gift for new parents and grandparents to add to their home libraries.