The book's title refers to the beautiful silver skates to be awarded to the winner of the ice-skating race Hans Brinker hopes to enter.

Some editions of the story contain a footnote explaining that "Ludwig, Gretel, and Carl were named after German friends" and correctly giving Lodewijk, Grietje and Karel as the Dutch-language equivalents.

Other names that seem fictitious, such as "Voost", "Broom" or "Rychie", could be corruptions of existing Dutch forms (in this case "Joost", "Bram" and "Riekie").

[7] In Holland, poor but industrious and honorable 15-year-old Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel yearn to participate in December's great ice skating race on the canal.

By chance, Hans meets the famous surgeon Dr. Boekman and begs him to treat their father, but the doctor's fees are expensive and he has been very gruff following the death of his wife and disappearance of his son.

He diagnoses pressure on the brain, which can be cured by a risky and expensive operation involving trephining (a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull).

[9] Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates has been adapted into several films and plays, all of which center on the dramatic ice-skating competition as the climax of the story, in keeping with the book.

American poet Phoebe Cary—at whose New York City literary gatherings Dodge was a regular guest[17]—wrote a lengthy poem about it called "The Leak in the Dike", published posthumously in 1873,[18][19] which has been widely anthologized in books of poetry for schoolchildren.

The tale has also inspired full-fledged children's books of its own, which include: For tourism purposes, statues of the fictional dike-plugging boy have been erected in Dutch locations such as Spaarndam, Madurodam and Harlingen.

[35][36] This appeared in an English translation by Sarah West Lander,[37] titled "The Little Dykeman" and attributed to Foa, in the monthly magazine Merry's Museum for Boys and Girls in March 1868.