Don't Miss this Book

Eleanor Estes’ The Hundred Dresses was the 1945 Newbery Honor book; it's never been out of print since. You'll meet Wanda Petronski, an immigrant girl in a Connecticut school who's  ridiculed daily for wearing the same a faded blue dress. Wanda explains to anyone who'll listen that she has one hundred dresses at home, but classmates assume she does not and they make her life miserable.  

Her father has enough and pulls Wanda out of school; it’s then too late for anyone to apologize.   Maddie, one of Wanda's classmates who felt badly about the daily bullying but never took steps to stop it, now knows she's made a horrible mistake.  

The Hundred Dresses is one book every student should hear or read themselves.  This powerful tale speaks to an essential need all children have for acceptance and inclusion.  It's about teasing, and forgiveness.  

Helena Estes, the author's daughter has been asked about how her mother came to write this classic. It turns out that the author was inspired by a girl in her own class who always wore the same dress and was teased, and then moved away. Helena Estes explains that her mother never had a chance to apologize: "What could she do so many years later, my mother wondered, to set things right to reach out to the girl who had stood lonely and silent against the red brick wall of the school? Well, she thought, the one thing she could do was to write her story." 

The Hundred Dresses
Fiction:  AR Book Level= 5.4
Word Count= 7,342

"Book Talk" summary:
The Hundred Dresses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBMuxeKXiBA  

Find this book in Parkside's
Media Center or the Title 1 Room.

Check it out from the Lawrence Public Library:

http://www.lawpubliclibrary.org/ 

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