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.