Dress-Up Adventures

 

            Pretend you are ten years old.  Instead of spending a lot of your summer playing on a sunny Florida beach, you are stuck inside with nothing to do but read.  That’s OK.  You love to read.  Then, each book you read sets your imagination in gear for some fun! 

 

All this really did happen to the author of Legends from Mom’s Closet.  This author, Sasha Olsen, really is ten years old.  Thanks to an exceptionally rainy Florida summer, she spent more time doing one of her favorite activities: reading.  She wound up reading biographies of ten amazing women. She read about women from different cultures, like Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama, and Billie Holiday.  She read about women from different time periods, like Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, and Jackie Kennedy.  She even read about some stars of their days, like Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy, and Joan Jett.

Reading about these legends' lives inspired her to try to recreate each woman after she read about her. To do that, she had to check out her mother’s closet to put together the costumes.  Sometimes her grandmother even came to her rescue with hair styling assistance and a few items of clothing.

To document all this fun, she wrote about it in her diary.  What a fun read!  Her mom’s friend took beautiful photographs of all her costumes and props and ofSasha all dressed up.  She even included a page of directions on how to dress up like each of the women. 

Your girls from about six to 12 years old will enjoy this book.  Maybe this will be a springboard to read some biographies that will spark their imaginations.  Don’t be surprised if you find them rummaging in your closet to find some dress-up clothes!  

Author, Sasha Olsen