The Hundred Dresses craft activity

hundred dresses3Reading Time reviewer Carissa Mason shares a craft activity inspired by books… 

If your little one loves paper dolls, dress-ups and drawing, you need to beg, borrow or buy The Hundred Dresses books – both the adult and the child versions (reviewed below). I chanced upon this pairing while browsing the catalogue at my local library, looking for new reads for my trio the other day. And I’m so pleased I did. 

Paper doll craft:

We’re big fans of paper dolls in our family. We have spent countless afternoons fashioning clothes from pretty paphundred dresses4er to dress cardboard cut-out dolls from the local discount shop; we’ve practiced scissor skills cutting our own accordion dolls and; for their fifth birthday, I gave my twins a set of paper dolls designed by Babalisme to look just like them, complete with their favourite toys.

So, after reading The Hundred Dresses book for children, we pulled out our personalised paper dolls (you can download a fairytale set free, but any paper dolls would work just fine) and the girls drew dresses for them inspired by those in the grown-up The Hundred Dresses book. First, they traced lightly around the doll’s body onto a piece of paper to give them the right size for the dress. Then they drew the dress freehand over the top, before colouring it in and cutting it out. You could also stick the dolls and dresses to adhesive magnets and play with them on the fridge or a baking tin, but we didn’t do that this time. Kira was more interested in this project than Zoe and ended up creating a whole wardrobe for her doll. She designed a few of her own frocks too! It was interesting watching which dresses she chose to replicate and her interpretation of them. This was a fun activity, inspired by two great books.

The books:

The Hundred Dresses, Eleanor Estes & Louis Slobodkin, (Harcourt, 2004)

The first The Hundred Dresses introduces the reader to Peggy, a primary school girl who feels terrible for standing by and saying nothing to stop her best friend Maddie from teasing a classmate. Wanda Petronski wears the same faded dress to school every day, has a foreign surname and lives at the poor end of town. Maddie makes a game of askhundred dresses1ing her every day about the 100 dresses she obviously does not own. Peggy feels uncomfortable about this and the author skillfully shares Peggy’s feelings of dismay and uncertainty – and her fear she will become the next target if she speaks up – with the reader.

My twin girls, 7, listened intently as I read them this story to them and begged me to keep reading at the end of each chapter. The story spoke right to them, with complex characters that perhaps are unusual for a book for this age group. Maddie and Peggy were seemingly confident, yet imperfect and unsure of themselves.

This story was written more than 70 years ago, in 1944, and is just as readable and relevant today as it must have been then. It has been named a Newberry Honor Book and this edition includes a foreword from the author’s daughter, explaining the real-life inspiration for the story, which I think gives strength to its inherent message – be kind and stand up for what is right.

It’s a beautifully-presented book, with a good balance of words and pictures for reading aloud or for newly-minted readers who appreciate pictures to help them visualise the story. It’s broken into seven manageable chapters, with illustrations on most pages. The pictures are mostly black and white, although many have a splash of colour and there is a glorious double-page spread at the centre which shows Wanda’s drawings of her 100 dresses. I wish there were more books presented in this way because they are a lovely step-up from picture books for bedtime read alouds.

 

The Hundred Dresses, Erin McKean & Donna Mehalko, (Bloomsbury, 2013)hundred dresses2

The second The Hundred Dresses is an adult book, inspired by the children’s book, featuring 100 iconic dress styles. Each dress is shown with a full-page, colour illustration, resembling a fashion designer’s sketch. The pictures are bright and fun and shout at you to pick up a pencil and draw too.

Alongside each frock, the author provides a page of commentary about the dress style, including who may have worn it, how they accessorised it and what messages each particular style may convey. I found this interesting and older girls may also appreciate it, but I encouraged my seven-year-olds to focus on the pictures, as I felt the text was a bit too adult for them in some parts, for example, “The Bond dress is all about weaponizing the cleavage”. (It is a grown-up book, after all, but I don’t want to explain that sort of thing to my girls just yet!) If your readers insist on delving into the text, there are plenty of dresses with child-friendly commentary, such as the Anne Shirley, Disney, Dorothy, Bouquet, and Classic Party Dress.

 

By Carissa Mason

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