Dodge is most sensitive to the pressures financial insecurity and poverty place on parents and children. While she does not encourage excessive materialism, she recognizes that adequate housing, food, and clothing can make life more rewarding and less frightening. The Brinker family, in spite of the taunts of some middle-class characters, is hardworking, loving, and proud. Dodge praises those of means Hans Brinker; or. The Silver Skates who help the Brinkers, but she emphasizes that charitable acts must be performed with a sense of shared humanity and respect for the recipients.

She also implies that many of the poor, as exemplified by the Brinkers, are victims of accidents beyond their control, that their poverty is material, not spiritual. Dodge uses the skating race to show how the poor, if given an equal chance, can surpass the rich. In this contest, Hans and Gretel are more than...