The Welcome Chair - Rosemary Wells

The Welcome Chair

By: Rosemary Wells, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

Hardcover | 2 November 2021

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“An eloquent account of the American immigrant experience.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Deserves to become a modern classic.” —BookPage (starred review)
“A resounding welcome to immigrants.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Based in part on a 100-year-old family journal, Rosemary Wells brings to life a story that the diary’s fragile pages tell. It’s the story of a wooden rocking chair handmade in about 1825 by her great-great-grandfather, an immigrant Jewish boy who made his way to America from Germany in the early 1800s.

In 1807, Sam Siegbert is born in southern Germany. Sam’s favorite pastime is carpentry, much to his father’s displeasure. His mother says he has a gift from God in his hands. After moving to America, he builds a wooden chair with the word WILLKOMMEN on the back. The chair’s back panel was later marked with welcomes by four generations of the family in four different languages.

After the family lost track of the old chair, the author created a new life for it among new owners from other corners of the world. All the families who loved the chair came to America, escaping religious conformity, natural disasters, tyrannies, war, and superstition. In its lifetime, the rocking chair, with its earliest word WILLKOMMEN, stood for openness, hospitality, and acceptance to all who owned it or rocked safely in its embrace.
Industry Reviews
One legendary author/illustrator turns to a family story to celebrate immigration to America; another illustrates it.

In 1823, Wells’ great-great-grandfather, a talented woodcarver, leaves Bavaria to escape his father’s Orthodox Judaism and lands in New York City. While working as a bookkeeper, he fashions a rocking chair with Willkommen carved into its back. Resettling in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, with the chair, he begins a family, carving new words for welcome in both Hebrew and English. The chair then journeys with his daughter back to New York, where Fáílte, Irish for welcome, is added when the chair is given to an Irish servant as a wedding gift. Years later, the family story having ended, Wells turns to political turmoil and natural disaster to continue the chair’s history. Dominican nuns fleeing the Trujillo dictatorship carve Bienvenido; a Black physician brings home a baby from Haiti after its devastating earthquake and adds Akeyi. To round out the saga, a girl named Amira coming to America from a “distant land destroyed by war” is welcomed by new friends, that same chair, and a newly carved word for welcome in Arabic. Wells clearly states her strong feelings about immigration in her preface, in her author’s note, and in this deeply felt generational story of a well-used and well-loved chair. Pinkney’s signature artwork forms an inviting accompaniment with its soft lines and muted tones. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Whether stated in one language or many, a resounding welcome to immigrants. (illustrator's note, photograph) 

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