The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin is a great read for elementary aged children. It is a short and quick read but has a great and meaningful message.
Wanda the main character is a poor immigrant girl from Poland that just wants to be liked by her peers. Her peers all have so many materialistic items and begin to tease Wanda as she wears the same dress to school every day. She tells everyone that she has one hundred dresses at home but is made fun of because she wears the same dress every day. Eventually her father makes the decision to move her away due to the harrassment of her peers. One of the girls that harrassed Wanda begins to feel guilty and discovers a notebook that belongs to Wanda. The notebook is filled with beautiful sketches of 100 dresses. Her classmates realized that they had misjudged Wanda and were filled with regret.
The book is full with discussion material about the dangers of judging a book by its cover, snobbery, bullying, regret, being an upstander versus a bystander, and what it truly means to be a friend.
