A good time was had by all.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Monday, November 9, 2026
Clothes To Make You Smile (juvenile biography)
Eric Darnell Pritchard's Clothes To Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams certainly made me smile. I'm betting it will do the same for you and the children in your life.
Patrick grew up poor and Black in the racially segregated South, raised by his grandmother and mother. Even as a child he was fascinated by the garments women wore to church on Sunday. They were homemade then, sewing skills being passed down from mother to daughter across generations.
Patrick wasn't into typical boy interests like sports. He enjoyed studying the fashion magazines his grandmother gave him and sewing. He aspired to create clothes that could be in those magazines. By his early teens he could design and create garments that were really popular in his home town...
...but rejected for being "too vibrant", "too tight", "too tacky", and "too much" in bigger places like Atlanta and New York City. Did this rejection kill his dream of creating clothes that would make people smile?
Hell, no!!! His narrative of courage and determination, perfectly accompanied by Shannon Wright's evocative collage like illustrations, will delight and inspire young readers...
...especially those who, like Patrick growing up, feel different from their peers.
On a purrrsonal note, as anyone who has read this blog long enough will attest I'm a big believer in wearing clothes that make the wearer and beholder smile 😃. I love it when people respond to my attire with excitement. A couple of decades ago I began to see disturbing columns instructing people to dress by the decades. The garments they foisted on older women were drab, dull, ultra conservative, boring--basically eminently forgettable. Nothing Gordon College's 1984 most unforgettable senior woman would evah wear. So I wisely chose to ignore them and do me. Becoming a drag performer opened up a whole new world of glitter and glam. And my growing collection of cat tattoos is the perfect cherry 🍒 on my glorious style sundae. The outfits I piece together most definitely make me and the people I encounter smile.
A great big shout out goes out to Pritchard and Wright for creating such an empowering and inspiring book and to all who dress freely and confidently feeling good about themselves and evoking 😃 😊 in their beholders.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my Galaxy
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