The Hundred Dresses - by Eleanor Estes

About the Book

Wanda Petronski, a little Polish girl in an American school, is laughed at because she always wears a faded blue dress, until her classmates learn a lesson.

Book Synopsis

A 1945 Newbery Honor Book

Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since. At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn't and bullies her mercilessly. The class feels terrible when Wanda is pulled out of the school, but by that time it's too late for apologies. Maddie, one of Wanda's classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again." This powerful, timeless story has been reissued with a new letter from the author's daughter Helena Estes, and with the Caldecott artist Louis Slobodkin's original artwork in beautifully restored color.

Review Quotes

"Sensitive, intuitive, restrained . . . will take its place with the books that endure."--Saturday Review "Written with rare intuition and pictured with warm sympathy and charm."--The Horn Book "No young person . . . will ever forget it."--Book Week --