Book Reflection: I Had a Favorite Dress

I Had a Favorite Dress by Boni Ashburn; pictures by Julia Denos.



My first picture book came in!  I could tell by the reviews of this one that I would like it, but reading it made me realize I love it.  I think little girls will, too.

A little girl has a favorite dress she wears on her favorite day of the week, but with time she outgrows the dress and she panics.  Never fear, though.  Mom tells her not to 'make mountains of of molehills, but make molehills out of mountains,'  and voila!  With a snip snip, and a sew sew, she continuously creates a new favorite article of clothing for the little girl.  As she grows, the dress gets smaller but the little girl and her mom always work together to create something new rather than get rid of it.

The story is told with loose, internal rhymes.  I usually don't like stories in rhyme, but this one works.  It's not sing-songy, clunky, or cloying.  The illustrations are absolutely adorable.  Julia Denos uses a mix of watercolors and colored pencils with collage and fabric elements thrown in.  The word 'sew' is always shown with embroidery stitches which is a great detail.  There isn't a lot of white space, but there is so much fun stuff to look at on every page.  This book is filled with very fashionable girls.  I was actually jealous of almost all the outfits the girls and the mom wear.  Mini clotheshorses will love studying these details.

It’s great to watch the favorite dress morph into multiple items and ultimately into something un-wearable, but still wonderful.  Kids today live in a disposable world and I think it's a great, lighthearted way to show them that not everything has to be tossed away immediately after a little wear and tear.  Just because something doesn't stay the same doesn't mean you can't make it last for a long time.  I think the girl’s end product could spark a lot of creativity and possibly work as a cool library program.  It might even work as a complicated but awesome flannelboard story.  Don’t quote me on that, though.

I think this book would work best for individual readings because there is a lot of detail that might not be apparent in a group setting, but I'd still like to try it for storytime.  I might try it for a lower elementary school visit to segue into introducing non-fiction materials, such as craft and fashion/style books.  Either way, I’m trying it.

Would I have loved this book when I was a little girl?  YES YES YES.  I hope our kids will, too.