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18TH CENTURY CLOTHING

Bobbie Kalman
Niagara-on-the Lake (Ont.), Crabtree Publishing Company, 1993.
32pp, library binding, ISBN 0-86505-492-4 (library binding) $16.76, ISBN 0-86505-512-2 (paper) $8.96. CIP


Grades 3 and up/Ages 8 and up

Reviewed by Joan Payzant.

Volume 21 Number 4
1993 September


This beautiful book, illustrated by Antoinette "Cookie" De Biasi and Barb Bedell, gives children a complete picture of how settlers along the eastern coast of North America prepared wool, flax, and leather to produce their clothing and footwear in the eighteenth century. It is lavishly illustrated with colour drawings and photographs, the majority of the latter coming from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Differences in social class were readily noticeable from the quality and style of clothing. Although the working classes had plainer, looser and more serviceable garments, their clothes had the considerable benefit of being far more comfortable. Footwear for women and men, accessories, hair styles, wigs, hats, underwear and children's clothing are described and illustrated.

Although the book is written for a grade 3 reading level, a number of my adult friends have picked it up and read it with delight, exclaiming over such oddities as eyebrow "wigs" made from mouse fur and "pud­dings," protective sausage-like padding in little children's hats or hung around their hips.

Recommended.


Joan Payzant is a former teacher-librarian in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
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