After I read The Hundred Dresses to my kids, we got a wild idea-- what if we set out to make a hundred dresses! We decided to enlist their friends too, so when the girls have a friend over we ask them to design a dress and add it to our (fast growing) collection. Once they get going, it's hard for them to stop at just one!

 

And then this happened...

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My youngest daughter read a book about Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to bravely enter a newly desegregated school in Louisiana. I was blown away when, a week later, on her own, she created a dress that little Ruby might have worn showing how she would have felt living in the segregated South. My daughter added the setting and emotion to her drawing, taking our Hundred Dresses project to a level I'd never imagined. Her drawing affected me deeply. I LOVE bringing books alive with art. And now I'm inspired to bring important history to the art table too, thanks to my daughter! I hope you'll be inspired to start your own Hundred Dresses art project!