Summary
Chapter 5: The Hundred Dresses- I
The story is about a quiet and shy girl named Wanda Petronski who was a Polish immigrant and had come to America with her family. She attended the school with America n children who found her name to be weird in the classroom because they all had easier names. She was a poor girl and was always seen wearing a faded blue dress. Her classmates used to tease her because she claimed to have a hundred dresses “all lined up” in her closet although she was always seen wearing only one. The ones who mostly teased her were her two best friends, Peggy and Maddie. Peggy was the most famous girl in school while anyone barely knew Wanda.
Maddie, a poor girl herself did not like it when Peggy made fun of Wanda. She was afraid that she could be the next. She wanted Peggy to stop making fun of Wanda, but could not collect the courage to face her as she was afraid that she would lose her best friend. However, Peggy’s aim was not to hurt Wanda but she was interested to know as to why Wanda had to speak a lie that she had a hundred dresses in her closet. Truth about the same hundred dresses opened on the result day of the drawing competition.
The room was lined with one hundred drawings showing different dresses, each so beautiful. That day, she actually had “a hundred dresses all lined up”, but in the classroom. At that moment, Peggy and Maddie, who were enthralled realized the theory of a hundred dresses and felt at fault about having treated her badly.