Customer Reviews

The Hundred Dresses

5 star:		(101)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

Wanda is the poor motherless girl from Poland. By the author's description, you get the feeling that even if she doesn't have a perfect verbal command of English, she understands perfectly what is said to and about her and her shabby clothing.

Worlds apart is Peggy, the popular rich girl in her class. After Wanda makes an attempt to fit into a conversation by talking about her beautiful dresses, Peggy begins what seems like a game to her and taunts Wanda daily in front of a crowd of classmates about all of the beautiful dresses in her closet.

Bridging their world is Maddie, Peggy's best friend. While she isn't isolated by a language barrier and has Peggy's unspoken social protection, she is uncomfortably aware that her poverty makes her more similar to Wanda than Peggy. While Maddie gratefully accepts Peggy's castoffs, she is terrified of the power Peggy's generosity gives her. The daily game of picking on Wanda continually hardens Maddie's uncomfortable vulnerability; she is keenly aware that speaking out in Wanda's defense could put her in Wanda's place.

The "truth" is that Wanda does have 100 dresses, just not the kind Peggy has. The moment where Wanda shyly makes her fateful declaration is possibly the most poignant in the whole book. Of course she must have known that people would wonder why someone with so many beautiful dresses would always wear the same shabby one. Did she naively, hopefully think that someone would ask her about them and maybe let her into their world? Instead, she was met with nasty assumptions and taunting.

The book ends on a melancholy note. Maddie (and perhaps Peggy) become better people as a result of what happens to Wanda and her family, but Maddie (and the reader) are haunted by Wanda's unkown fate. Like Maddie, we can only hope for the best.

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.

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.

The story of The Hundred Dresses is about a girl named Wanda Petronski. She lived up on a hill called Boggins Heights. The story is about people teasing Wanda by asking her how many dresses she had and she would say, "I have a hundred dresses." when she only had one fadded blue dress. One day her dad pulls her out of class and decides that they are moving to the big city where no one would tease her. I thought it was a great book. It taught me that just because someone does not have a mother and is different that doesn't mean that they can't be good at anything. I recomend this book for kids ages five to eight because it teaches kids that you shouldn't tease other kids, and treat everybody with respect.

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.

This story about Wanda Petronski, an immigrant girl from a poor family ridiculed by her more popular, wealthier and American-born classmates is as relevant to children today as when it was first published. I read and re-read this book as a child; like Wanda, I was the only one in my class with a funny-sounding Eastern European last name. Fortunately, my situation was not as dire as hers, but I felt Wanda and I were kindred souls.

Estes' perceptive take on the effect of cliques of popular girls and the influence they wield was ahead of its time. The relationships between the girls echoes what we read today in books like "Odd Girl Out" and "Queen Bees and Wannabes." Peggy, an Alpha Girl if there ever was one, ridicules Wanda's foreigness and the shabby blue dress (her only dress) that she washes and irons each night to wear the next day. Maddie, Peggy's wannabe friend, is troubled by Peggy's insensitivity but is afraid to speak up. Maddie's afraid that Peggy might turn on her, too. Then, Wanda stops coming to school. The other children forget about Wanda, but Maddie still thinks about her and wonders what happened to her. She persuades Peggy to go visit Wanda's house on the wrong side of the tracks; the part of town where the poor people and "foreigners" live. Wanda has moved away to a larger city, but the experience of knowing Wanda has changed Maddie for the better. She's more independent and willing to question Peggy and the values she represents. She's more open and empathetic to the experiences of people from different and less fortunate backgrounds.

And what becomes of Wanda? In this book's wonderfully ingenious ending, Wanda takes her poverty and marginalization and turns to a creative end. Wanda, so poor that she only owns one dress, paints pictures of a hundred dresses and sends them back to the class at her old school. Wanda refuses to be victimized by her classmate's ridicule. Instead, she becomes an artist! I loved this ending as a child; it shows how children can overcome their problems with imagination and a respect for their own inner lives.

Louis Slobodkin's illustrations complement the story perfectly (he also collaborated with Estes on the Moffat books). His evocative artwork supplies just the right amount of detail and leaves the rest to the reader's imagination. This is a truly great work of children's literature and we should rejoice that it's still in print.

The other day, I was thinking about this book. Truly, every rainy chilly day (especially days I cross railroad tracks), I would remember this book that I had read over and over. What a delight to discover it again after countless garage sales and moves had separated us. I had never felt sorry for Wanda, though I knew what it was like to be teased, because I knew she had created something wonderful. A story that can live in a child's mind, growing into a powerful memory over the course of 25 years is beyond special. This book should be shared with as many children as possible.

As a children's librarian, I see many children's books on a regular basis. But this one, shown to me by my mentor, remains one of my all-time favorites. It reminds us that even children's lives are not free from cruelty and of our obligation to at least try to be kind to everyone we come in contact with. And it does this without being preachy. I look forward to sharing it with my daughter when she is a little older.

I read this book in grade school, and then saw it again in the library, now some 25 years later. I read it through right then and there, and it brought tears to my eyes. The cruelty that children can sometimes wage upon eachother is the same now as it was back when this book was first written in the 1940s. I wonder why books like this are not required reading. It seems that most of the truly great children's books I read, I picked up on my own, and not via the classroom or my teachers.