By: Eleanor Estes Publisher: Harcourt Paperbacks Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Harcourt Paperbacks Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 96 Publication Date: September 01, 2004 Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Never out of print since its 1944 publication, this tender story offers readers of all ages a timeless message of compassion and understanding. At its heart is Wanda Petronski, an immigrant girl in an American school, who is ridiculed for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. When she tells her classmates that she has one hundred dresses at home, she unwittingly triggers a game of teasing that eventually ends in a lesson for all.
In restoring the reproduction of Louis Slobodkin's artwork, this new edition recaptures the original vivid color. And to celebrate the book's enhanced beauty, Helena Estes, the daughter of the author, has written a new letter to readers about the true story behind The Hundred Dresses.
Amazon.com: Wanda Petronski lives way up in shabby Boggins Heights, and she doesn't have any friends. Every day she wears a faded blue dress, which wouldn't be too much of a problem if she didn't tell her schoolmates that she had a hundred dresses at home--all silk, all colors, and velvet, too. This lie--albeit understandable in light of her dress-obsessed circle--precipitates peals of laughter from her peers, and she never hears the end of it. One day, after Wanda has been absent from school for a few days, the teacher receives a note from Wanda's father, a Polish immigrant: "Dear teacher: My Wanda will not come to your school any more. Jake also. Now we move away to big city. No more holler Polack. No more ask why funny name. Plenty of funny names in the big city. Yours truly, Jan Petronski."
Maddie, a girl who had stood by while Wanda was taunted about her dresses, feels sick inside: "True, she had not enjoyed listening to Peggy ask Wanda how many dresses she had in her closet, but she had said nothing.... She was a coward.... She had helped to make someone so unhappy that she had had to move away from town." Repentant, Maddie and her friend Peggy head up to Boggins Heights to see if the Petronskis are still there. When they discover the house is empty, Maddie despairs: "Nothing would ever seem good to her again, because just when she was about to enjoy something--like going for a hike with Peggy to look for bayberries or sliding down Barley Hill--she'd bump right smack into the thought that she had made Wanda Petronski move away." Ouch. This gentle Newbery Honor Book convincingly captures the deeply felt moral dilemmas of childhood, equally poignant for the teased or the tormentor. Louis Slobodkin, illustrator of the 1944 Caldecott Medalist Many Moons, brings his wispy, evocative, color-washed sketches to Eleanor Estes's time-proven classic about kindness, compassion, and standing up for what's right. (Ages 6 and older) --Karin Snelson
Wonderful Story This was a great book with a perfect lesson about bullying. I read it with my daughters aged 5, 7 and 9. They really got the lesson.
Disappointing This book has a lot of build up surrounding the dresses... are they real, imaginary, did she make them, buy them, or inherit them? Teasing from the main character's peers made me as the reader wait in suspense to find out what the dresses really were and to look forward to the girl standing up for herself. When we finally find out about the dresses, however, I found it to be a bit anticlimactic with very little resolution to the issues of bullying, teasing, gossiping, and stereotyping. Not impressed by this apparent "classic."
A Subtle Teaching Message Estes, Eleanor, author. Slobodkin, Louis, illustrator. (1972). The Hundred Dresses A Realistic Fiction story. Small chapter book. It is a Newberry Honor book.
Ending somewhat sadly with no real resolution, this story tells the problems faced by many young school girls. Wanda and Peggy are worlds apart. Wanda is a poor girl with no mother and Peggy is a rich girl with everything she wants. In between is Maggie, a girl who wants to relate with Peggy, but sees her life more like Wanda's. The realistic characterization is recognized in the story's language. "Goodby, Wanda," said Peggy. "Your hundred dresses sound bee-yoo-tiful" (pg. 32), gives readers an immediate connection with the honest message portrayed in the story. At first, Wanda does appear strange to Maggie. In the end, however, Maggie finds she knows more about Wanda than first thought. It is this connection from author to reader that creates the realism in this story. The illustrations are designed in colored pencils. There is unique shading to the illustrations that gives a touching effect. While the illustrations are not "to date" they are simple and provide readers with a portrait of another time. They help to support the story's realistic theme. The drawings of the dresses revealed on pages 42 and 43, create the needed picture for students to see the story come to life. For early to middle elementary students, a personal and social discussion on the relationships we have with others, the affect we have on others, and our responsibility to think of others in regard to ourselves might me utilized. The theme of the story is central to teaching how this book can cause us to think and grow as a person.
A powerful, direct antidote to racism and prejudice When she was young --- this was almost a century ago --- Eleanor Estes went to school with a Polish girl who was so poor that she wore the same dress every day. Kids are cruel; the girl got teased. And then she moved away.
In 1944, Eleanor Estes took that memory and turned it into The Hundred Dresses, a short novel --- 80 big-print pages, with many illustrations --- for children. It was named a Newberry Honor Book. It has never gone out of print.
Unlike children's book authors who get cute or write down to kids, Eleanor Estes is blunt as a police reporter. As the book begins, Wanda Petronski --- poor, motherless, foreign --- is not in school, and that means Peggy and Madeline have no one to tease.
It's not that Peggy and Madeline are witches-in-training. Peggy's the most popular girl in school. "She protected small children from bullies. And she cried for hours if she saw an animal mistreated." And Madeline, her best friend, really had no reason to be mean. She was just going along.
And yet, in the schoolyard, they'd corner Wanda: "How many dresses did you say you had hanging up in your closet?"
"A hundred," Wanda would say. And she'd describe them. Silk. Velvet. In all colors.
"A hundred dresses?" the girls would repeat. "Nobody could have a hundred dresses."
But Wanda would hold her ground: "I have."
There's an art competition. Long before the winners are announced, Wanda's father decides he's had enough and moves his kids away from the town where his daughter is tormented. And so the announcement of the winner --- the never-to-be-seen-again Wanda, for her beautiful sketches of a hundred dresses --- has a double wallop. Because the teacher goes right on to read a note from Wanda's father: "No more holler Polack. No more ask why funny name. Plenty of funny names in the big city."
A long silence follows.
Just before Christmas, their teacher gets a nice note from Wanda, giving Peggy and Maddie each a sketch.
Maddie takes her drawing home. That night, she looks hard at it and sees something she hadn't noticed --- the face is hers. Wanda had drawn it just for her. And it turned out that Peggy's sketch is also a portrait of Peggy.
The book ends with Maddie and Peggy admiring their pictures:
"What did I say!" said Peggy. "She must have really liked us anyway."
"Yes, she must have," agreed Maddie, and she blinked away the tears that came every time she thought of Wanda standing alone in that sunny spot in the school yard close to the wall, looking stolidly over at the group of laughing girls after she had walked off, after she had said, "Sure, a hundred of them --- all lined up..."
Our daughter goes to a school where the very first thing kindergarteners are taught is the power of words. She's lucky. At many schools, I'm sure, that lesson isn't taught --- and the small, the sensitive and the different do get teased, and pushed around, and hurt.
"The Hundred Dresses" can teach young readers that bullies aren't just mean boys who threaten their targets physically. A racial or ethnic slur will do just as well. And the kid who watches it happen and says nothing is just as guilty as the kid who talked that trash.
Dress styles change, but this book is endlessly fresh and accessible. Thank racism, prejudice and human nature for that. And then bless the little girl who inspired Eleanor Estes to write such a smart, simple antidote.
The Hundred Dresses Every child at one time or another has been teased or mocked by other children, particularly in public schools. Those of us who have witnessed it, suffered it, or may have even done it, will remember the experience as painful, humiliating, and regrettable. The Hundred Dresses helps children see from another child's perspective this damaging behavior. Even thought this story was written over six decades ago, the materialistic theme of judging others by their clothing is still prevalent today. Throughout the story, the author has a cunning way of developing the theme so that the reader can relate to each of the characters: Wanda and how it feels to be the outcaste, Peggy and it feels to be the bully, and finally Maddie and how it feels to be guilty for letting the mistreatment go so far.
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