I Had a Favorite Dress by Boni Ashburn and illustrated by Julia Denos (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2011) emphasizes childhood creativity and recycling when clothes stop fitting. When the narrator’s dress stops fitting, her creative mother adapts it into a ruffly shirt.
As that item of clothing becomes too worn or too small, the narrator and her mother find a way to adapt it for further use. The narrator wears her favorite dress on Tuesdays, her favorite shirt on Wednesdays, and so forth, and the book rotates through the seasons, thus bringing the story in a satisfying circle of passing time.
The illustrations are a mixed media collage, including watercolor, graphite, colored pencil, and needle and thread. I loved the addition of sewing stitches to highlight the means by which the narrator and her mother are recycling the clothing item. It is truly a fantastically illustrated story highlighting the extended life of a young girl’s favorite dress.
