I’m fascinated by the many different mediums children’s book illustrators use as they create pictures. In “Hannah and the Seven Dresses,” we see a clever way to show texture and color – the author, who is also the illustrator, made cloth collages and used them for the pictures. This is perfectly suited to the story, as the story is about clothes.
Hannah sometimes has a hard time making decisions. You see, she has a closet full of lovely dresses, which she loves to wear, but it can be very hard to decide what dress to wear on what day. All of her dresses are beautiful, because her mother loves to sew. But with seven dresses to choose from, how will she ever pick?
But then she has a wonderful idea.
On Monday, she’ll wear her red dress with the puffed sleeves.
On Tuesday, she’ll wear the green-checked dress with pockets.
On Wednesday, it will be the blue dress with country scenes printed all over it.
What could be better for a Thursday than a yellow dress with red rick-rack all around the bottom?
Fridays, she’ll wear the gray dress with thirteen buttons down the front. Every one of those buttons has a different story, and Hannah knows them all.
Saturday is a fun day, so she’ll wear her fun orange dress, the one that’s covered with pompoms.
And, last but not least, on Sunday she’ll wear the purple dress with the crinolines underneath.
Her problem is solved! She’ll never have to worry about what to wear again, until her birthday. Which falls on a Tuesday.
Is the green dress special enough? This dilemma is solved in a rather silly way – she decides to wear all of her dresses at once, but she’s so bulky, she can’t play the party games with the other children.
So she goes upstairs and puts on a pair of black pants, and she never wears a dress again.
I really enjoyed looking at all the fabrics used to create this book. The colors are bright and vibrant, and the textures came through so well, you almost think you could reach into the pictures and touch them. This is a fun visual book as well as a cute story.
(This book was published in 1999 by Dutton Children’s Books.)
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