The Hundred Dresses

by Eleanor Estes

illustrated by Louis Slobodkin

copyright 1973

The Hundred Dresses is a children’s book that was first published in 1944, yet holds a message achingly pertinent to people in any day and age.  I read this book as a child in the seventies and I remember feeling heartache for the main characters.  A child reading it today will be able to empathize with them as much as a child of seventy years ago.  

Wanda Petronski not only has a funny name, but she lives in the poor part of town and wears the same faded, blue dress to school every single day.  One day, she tells the other girls that she has a hundred dresses at home in her closet.  The dresses are silk and velvet, in many beautiful colors.  Peggy, the most popular girl in class, and her best friend Maddie, begin to “have fun” with Wanda, every day questioning her about her hundred dresses.  

While Maddie felt uncomfortable with this teasing, she sure didn’t want to speak up.  After all, the girls might start to pick on her!  Maddie’s feelings escalate when Wanda doesn’t show up for school for several days.  They discover that Wanda’s father has moved the family to the city, where their funny last name won’t stand out.  The children also come to realize that Wanda wasn’t actually lying about her hundred dresses.   

This story is as much about the children who, in hindsight, regret their actions as it is about the pride, talent, and imagination of the girl who was teased.  

The author does an excellent job of portraying the complicated feelings of both the bully and the bullied in a language simple enough for children to understand.  

“At last Maddie sat up in bed and pressed her forehead tight in her hands and really thought.  This was the hardest thinking she had ever done.  After a long, long time she reached an important conclusion.  She was never going to stand by and say nothing again.” 

This is a story about compassion, kindness, and understanding that resonates today as much as it did when it was first written.