Grandmother Bryant's Pocket

by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Grandmother Bryant's Pocket is a story about Sarah Bryant, an eight-year-old girl who lived two hundred years ago on a farm in Maine. When the barn burns down and Sarah's dog Patches is caught in the fire she begins to have bad dreams. Nothing her parents do helps Sarah get over these nightmares. So she goes to live with her Grandmother and Grandfather Bryant. Grandmother Bryant is a healer and Grandfather Bryant a whittler.

Two hundred years ago pockets were not sewn into women's clothes but were tied around the waist under a skirt, a bit like our own "fanny packs" would be if we wore them under our clothes. Grandmother Bryant's old pocket with its stitches and smells, Grandfather Bryant's stories, and a one-eyed cat eventually help Sarah get over her nightmares and even face the biting, pinching geese which had terrified her.
Grandmother Bryant's Pocket won Maine's Lupine Book Award and was a Bulletin Blue Ribbon book, a School Library Journal Best Book, an ALA Notable Book, and a Hungry Mind Review Book of Distinction.

"Though its story is set in 1787, this pocket-sized book tells a timeless tale about fears and their healing. ... The story unfolds in miniature chapters, brightened by Petra Mathers' charming and expressive illustrations." -- Hungry Mind Review (Summer 1997, pg. 28)

Curriculum Connections

Make pockets as Sarah had in Grandmother Bryant's Pocket - Pocket page.

Students at the George E. Jack School in Standish, Maine did a number of projects, with the help of their art teacher related to Grandmother Bryant's Pocket. They made apple head dolls, pockets, Gentlemen's leather pouches, and collected recipes using herbs and craft projects that relate to colonial times. Read about their projects on the Standish page on this website.
For more connections read below.

Healing Herbs/Plants --

Two hundred years ago healers could not go to the drug store for medicines but depended on various plants to help people recover from burns, cuts, or other sickness. Some of the plants they used are plants we can find growing in our own yard.

A good example is the dandelion. You might see dandelions in your yard or neighborhood. Their seeds were brought to this country by some of the first immigrants so they could have fresh greens in the spring. (Some people still use dandelion greens as a salad green. They must be picked before they blossom -- be careful not to pick if they have been sprayed with a herbicide -- washed and served fresh.)
Dandelions have spread all over the United States. Some people think their leaves and flowers are quite beautiful. The leaves of the dandelion can be dried and used as part of a picture collage.

Wild mint was used in tea, and bathwater. You can often tell a mint plant by its smell. All members of the mint family have square stems. You can dry mint as Sarah and her grandmother did. (Before you pick any plant have an adult help you identify it.)

Other important healing plants can be found in our kitchens.

Onions were a favorite cure for chest colds. They were chopped up, fried, and wrapped in a cloth that was then placed on the chest. We now know that onions are a very healthy food. So perhaps the "chopped onion cure" was a good one.

Games to Play and Things to Do --

You might play--or have played--some of the same games that Sarah Bryant and her cousins would have played, games such as "London Bridge is Falling Down," or "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," or "Ring Around a Rosy." Find a book that gives directions for playing these games.
Try some of the activities that children in Sarah's time liked to do:

Children in Sarah's time also liked to go ice-skating and sledding in the winter.
They collected glass marbles and played marbles in the spring.
In the summer girls picked hollyhock blossoms and turned them upside down to be ball gowns for dolls.

They made doll furniture from sticks, milkweed pods and other things they found.

Sarah's cousin Thomas might have had a small knife that he used to whittle whistles from chestnut or willow trees.

Children of all ages were expected to work.

Boys whittled brooms and girls were taught to knit as soon as their hands could hold the needles.
Often they were the ones to go through the wool sheared from the sheep and take out the straw and twigs.

There were no cameras in Sarah's day. But people did draw silhouettes, outlines of a shape, like a shadow would make, and cut them out of black paper.