The Hundred Dresses

by Eleanor Estes

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0152051708
• ISBN13: 9780152051709
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.9" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 6 to 9 years
• Grade Range: Grades 1 to 4

Customer Reviews

This is my all-time favorite book; has been since I found it in 4th grade. I’m 69 now.

I love the sensitivity it teaches to children without being preachy. It puts the reader in the moment and you “feel” the lessons to be learned. While it is great for kids, adults could benefit from it as well!

Beautiful Story

Beautifully illustrated story that shines a light on bullying and prejudice. Great lesson for children of all ages. Quick Read

Beautiful Images with a Beautiful Story

I had this book as a child and read it over and over and over. I felt something haunting about it, it was so unique among my books. The story is about a young girl who is not a mean person, but who becomes part of a crowd of bullies through peer pressure and social awkwardness. She's clearly troubled by what the other kids are doing, but is too afraid to stand up to them until one day it's too late and she runs out of chances to undo the damage. It's not a preachy anti-bullying book, and I think it's for precisely that reason that it's been in print so long. It's a human, starkly bittersweet story that stays with the reader many years later.

Read as an Adult

A wonderful book about finding out that what you think might not be true, and what is true is true!

Triste y Bello

Todos los días Wanda Petronski venia a la escuela con el mismo vestido -- siempre limpio pero bien usado. Así que por que diría que tenia cien vestidos, todos en fila, su armario en casa? Era una idea tan increíble que Peggy, la chica mas popular de la clase, no podía resistir burlarse de Wanda todos los días. Maddie, la mejor amiga de Peggy, sabia lo que era ser pobre y odiaba lo que las chicas hacían a Wanda. Pero no se atrevía a decir nada. Hasta un día, cuando entro al salón de clase y describió algo que cambio su pensamiento sobre Wanda. Entonces sabia que no se podía quedar callada mas... pero tal vez era demasiado tarde. Para ser un libro tan corto, Los Cien Vestidos contiene muchísima tristeza... y muchísimo corazón. Es una mirada intima sobre las dificultades de ser diferentes -- y de la capacidad humana de querer, arrepentirse, y perdonar. Las palabras de Eleanor Estes y las ilustraciones de Louis Slobodkin son a la misma vez simples y bellas. Este es el tipo de libro que se queda contigo mucho después de que los has terminado. Le doy cuatro estrellas en vez de cinco por llenarme de triste reflexión cuando preferiría ser entretenida.

Enduring, compelling, hopeful

I haven't read this book since I was in the second grade myself, but I remember it well. The girl with only one dress was very much like me at the time. The book portrays her with dignity-- she maintains that she does indeed have one hundred dresses and does not let her teasers take away the comfort of her own imagination. When she disappears from school, and Maddie and Peggy go to her empty home, they find the hundred dresses-- carefully drawn sketches in colored pencil on scraps of paper. As others have mentioned, this book will allow children to see the pain that is caused by teasing. But it also provides comfort, I believe, to children who are the "different" ones. Wanda is not a victim, but instead leaves for each of her teasers a gift of peace-- thier picture sketched faintly inside two of the dresses. Wanda humbles them with the beauty of her own humanity-- beauty that transcends poverty and discrimination.

A coming-of-age story

I first read this book as a girl more than 40 years ago, and I still love it.I've noticed something about this book that many reviews (and many of the lesson plans I've read) seem to miss, and I think it's an important point: This isn't the story of Wanda Petronski. It's the story of Maddie, an ordinary person who quietly assents to evil and then must live with her conscience. It's very tough stuff for young readers (and older ones), both deep and dark. I remember my own daughters finding it to be rough going emotionally, because Maddie's epiphany comes when the possibility of redemption is past, leaving her only with regret. This is unusual in children's fiction (and adults'), where the norm is for the central character--the character with whom the reader identifies--to be granted a second chance to make the compassionate choice. Estes quite deliberately, and, I think, properly, gave the book a real-life ending, where understanding occurs after the moment of truth has irretrievably gone by, and we realize that the next step, the step that occurs after the end of the story, is for the character and, by extension, the reader, to decide how to live her life from that point on.Wanda is not, as far as we know, a Jew, but this is nevertheless a Holocaust story, as well as a Civil Rights story, a story about tolerance and compassion but also a story about how evil flourishes when people of good will do not speak out. Estes is kind enough to her characters to allow Wanda the spirit and determination to rise above the rejection of her classmates, and to allow her to gracefully (but incorrectly) attribute the best of motives to Maddie and Peggy. In a way, though, her nobility makes Maddie's enlightenment even more bitter. Somehow, having our victims respond badly to our victimizing lets us off the hook: "She was a nasty person anyway." (I'll have to admit, part of me has always wondered if Wanda was being disingenuous or sarcastic in her final note. Was she deliberately putting the screws on Maddie and Peggy?)This book is extraordinarily and deceptively powerful, with its combination of quiet tone, enchanting pictures, and hard-hitting (but not overbearing) message. Girls will be particularly intrigued and inspired by the dresses themselves; the idea is compelling, and many will want to draw their own dresses. Most children will, I think, want to focus on that aspect of the story, rather than on Maddie's learning experience. The dresses are so liberating, both for Wanda and for the child's imagination, that parents and teachers will want to encourage young readers to rejoice in that aspect of the story, even as they guide them through the sad and difficult emotional concepts presented in this lovely, but heartrending, book.

Written in 1944 But Still A Common Tale Everywhere

This sensitive story was written in 1944 and due to "human nature" things haven't changed one iota since then. It is the tale of one poor immigrant girl's way of coping with her poverty and the constant teasing she gets from other little girls at her school. The other girls are very materialistic and judge others by their clothing. It's not a pretty picture. The story is thoughtful and doesn't make the in-crowd clique of girls seem awful, only immature and insensitive. One of the girls even feels pretty bad about the teasing and harassing of the little Polish girl, but she doesn't come forward because she doesn't want to lose her own social standing. What I love about this book the most is that it is a wonderful opportunity for adults to talk with children about the insidious damage caused by teasing and singling others out. Let's face it most adults haven't really grown out of that way of behaving. Keep your ears open in a corporate lunch room some time. If we hope to make this a better world we need more books like this one and we need to actively teach our kids a better more loving way of being. We also need to help them stand up for their own gut-feelings of right and wrong instead of teaching them to go along with the status quo as we so often do by our own examples. The simple, straight-forward text and the beautiful, evocative yet simple illustrations make this story accessible and unforgettable. It can help you bring up an important topic and discuss it with your children. I recommend it for every parent and every teacher.

What bittersweet memories this book brings to mind

I am an American born Chinese who grew up wearing second hand clothes in an all white affluent neighborhood. That was over 30 years ago and I can still remember the stinging isolation and teasing. After reading this book in third grade, I recall so clearly my heart melting, and crying so strongly for struggling proud Wanda. Last month I read this book to my six year old daughter and we had a long tender talk about how important it is to not judge people for what's on the outside. This story was written around the time of World War II, and I can only imagine that Eleanor Estes was an incredible insightful marvelous soul. I think this book should be on recommended reading lists for third grades - fifth grades. It's so well written, that as an adult I've reread passages to myself in appreciation of their understated eloquence.