The Hundred Penny Box

The Hundred Penny Box (1975), an illustrated children's book by Sharon Bell Mathis, centers on a young African American boy, Michael, and his 100-year-old great-great-Aunt Dewbert, who comes to live with the family in her dotage. The text is accompanied by distinctive watercolor illustrations by Leo and Ann Dillon. Annie Gottlieb (The New York Times) says the significance of The Hundred Penny Box is that “so few of us, now, have the day-to-day experience of living with someone very old. We think of the problems, the awkwardness, the burden, and, yes, the fear of death; never of the richness and the wonder. This book is about a young boy who has the experience and who lives it with a child's openness and matter-of-fact sense of mystery.” The Hundred Penny Box is a Newberry Honor book.

The Hundred Penny Box is set in Atlanta, Georgia, sometime in the mid-1970s. Michael's father, John has recently had Michael's great-great-aunt Dew move in with them. Aunt Dew's care falls to John because her own children, Junie and (a different) John, drowned when they were young in a terrible accident. Dew has a hard time learning Michael's name—or simply refuses to use it—because the name “John” is a family tradition for boys. It's Michael's middle name, but he is the first in many generations not to have it as his first name.

More likely, however, is that Dew has difficulty with Michael's name because of her age. At 100 years old, her memory is patchy and unpredictable. So, sometimes, is her behavior; Dew has a habit of singing to herself, always the same song, her “long song,” during which she sometimes will do nothing else. She is also fond of putting on her favorite records and asking Michael to “move to the music” with her.



Conflict arises in the shape of Michael's mother, Ruth, a caring woman, who takes her responsibility as Aunt Dew's primary caretaker very seriously. For instance, she refuses to let Aunt Dew fall asleep sitting in her chair, afraid that she might fall over and shatter a bone. She also sometimes puts Aunt Dew to bed to rest when Michael wants to play with her. Ruth, however, has her blind spots. She doesn't see the value in old things and dislikes that Aunt Dew won't part with her worn, broken, dingy possessions. In particular, she doesn't see the value of Dew's old wooden box, where the centenarian stores 100 pennies—one for each year of her life. Ruth explains her thinking to Michael by reminding him of his old teddy bear, which grew so tattered that it had to be thrown away. But as Aunt Dew explains to Michael, “Them's my years in that box. That's me in that box.” So one day, when Ruth, spring cleaning with great fervor, indicates that she wants to get rid of the box, Michael helps Dew hide it away where Ruth cannot find it.

Aunt Dew's box of 100 pennies is not only important as the physical manifestation of Aunt Dew's lived experience, but because it is also the bridge that allows her to bond with young Michael. Michael's favorite game to play with Aunt Dew is to draw a penny out of the box and ask her to tell about the corresponding year of her life. For example, her very first penny, from the year 1874, is the year she was born. Aunt Dew relates, “'Year I was born. Slavery over! Black men in Congress running things. They was in charge. It was the Reconstruction.” Of penny number 27, from 1901, she tells Michael that that was the year where two very important things happened. First, she gave birth to her twin boys with her husband Henry Thomas. And second, that is the year she received the box from Henry as a birthday gift. He had loaded it with the first 31 pennies.

Mathis's The Hundred Penny Box is a notable example of children's literature that treats old age honestly—it is neither idealized, nor described as a terrible affliction that prevents the elderly from experiencing joy or giving love. Aunt Dew is portrayed as sometimes clear-headed and observant and other times absent-minded, confused, or lost in a dream world of her own. By approaching this loaded topic through the all-seeing, but uncomprehending, innocent eyes of a young child, Mathis does justice to one of the most complicated and least honored aspects of human life.