their races and their nationalities. The book is about a young Polish girl named Wanda Petronski who is bullied by her classmates for her weird Polish name and the blue dress she wears every day. Wanda claims to have a hundred dresses at home and her classmates don’t believe her. After being pulled out of school by her father, Wanda wins a school art contest for her one hundred drawings of dresses. Her classmates felt regret about bullying her when they realized that it was their own faces drawn in the design of dresses by Wanda. Estes based the book on an incident from her own childhood, to atone for staying silent when a peer was bullied. Awards Newbery Medal, 1952 – Ginger Pye Newbery Honor Books – The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., The Hundred Dresses Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, 1961 – The Moffats Certificate of Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Literature, 1968 Pratt Institute Alumni Medal, 1968 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Nominee, 1970 Reception According to reviewer Carolyn Shute, Estes had the "ability to distill the very essence of childhood." Anita Silvey said she possessed a "rare gift for depicting everyday experiences from the fresh perspective of childhood." Estes is primarily recognized as a writer of family stories, and as one who "shaped and broadened that subgenre's tradition", primarily through her "seemingly artless style". Eleanor Cameron, in an article for The Horn Book Magazine, included Estes' Moffat books among "those that sit securely as classics in the realm of memorable literature". Works The Moffats (1941) The Middle Moffat (1942) The Sun and the Wind and Mr. Todd (1943) Rufus M. (1943) The Hundred Dresses (1944) The Echoing Green (1947) Sleeping Giant and Other Stories (1948) Ginger Pye (1951) A Little Oven (1955) Pinky Pye (1958) The Witch Family (1960) Small but Wiry (1963) The Alley (1964) The Lollipop Princess (1967) Miranda the Great (1967) The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode (1972) The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree (1973) The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu (1978) The Moffat Museum (1983) The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (1987) References Sources Book Web Help page External links Eleanor Estes at Library of Congress Authorities—with 42 catalog records Eleanor Estes Papers at the University of Connecticut 1906 births 1988 deaths American children's writers American librarians American women librarians Newbery Honor winners Newbery Medal winners People from West Haven, Connecticut Pratt Institute alumni University of New