Hannah and the Seven Dresses

Description

32 pages
Contains Illustrations
$16.99
ISBN 0-88776-447-9
DDC jC813'.54

Publisher

Year

1999

Contributor

Reviewed by Patricia Morley

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Review

“Seven” has long been a magical number in fairy tales and here it
fits the days of the week. Hannah has “a big problem.” She loves all
the beautiful dresses that her mother has sewn for her, but deciding
which one to wear on which day is making her knees jiggly and her toes
curl under. The solution is to allot one day of the week to each dress.
Day by day, Hannah delights in the details of that day’s dress.
Whether it’s the one with the bow, or the one with the deep pockets
ready to hold treasures, or the blue one with scenes from the
countryside, or the rows of rickrack on the yellow one, or the 13
buttons on Friday’s dress—each one is different.

Her birthday upsets this orderly scheme. She tries to resolve the
situation by wearing all seven dresses at once, but this results in a
variety of problems upsetting to Hannah but highly comical for readers.
Her solution? Pants! Many readers aged six and seven will agree.

Marthe Jocelyn, a designer of children’s clothing, has two daughters
and a keen sense of what pleases little girls. Her stylized
illustrations are as delightful as her text and set off Hannah’s
anxieties and exuberance along with her love of color and detail. Highly
recommended.

Citation

Jocelyn, Marthe., “Hannah and the Seven Dresses,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed January 21, 2025, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/21267.