Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I first read this book as a girl more than 40 years ago, and I still love it.
I've noticed something about this book that many reviews (and many of the lesson plans I've read) seem to miss, and I think it's an important point: This isn't the story of Wanda Petronski. It's the story of Maddie, an ordinary person who quietly assents to evil and then must live with her conscience. It's very tough stuff for young readers (and older ones), both deep and dark. I remember my own daughters finding it to be rough going emotionally, because Maddie's epiphany comes when the possibility of redemption is past, leaving her only with regret. This is unusual in children's fiction (and adults'), where the norm is for the central character--the character with whom the reader identifies--to be granted a second chance to make the compassionate choice. Estes quite deliberately, and, I think, properly, gave the book a real-life ending, where understanding occurs after the moment of truth has irretrievably gone by, and we realize that the next step, the step that occurs after the end of the story, is for the character and, by extension, the reader, to decide how to live her life from that point on.
Wanda is not, as far as we know, a Jew, but this is nevertheless a Holocaust story, as well as a Civil Rights story, a story about tolerance and compassion but also a story about how evil flourishes when people of good will do not speak out.
Estes is kind enough to her characters to allow Wanda the spirit and determination to rise above the rejection of her classmates, and to allow her to gracefully (but incorrectly) attribute the best of motives to Maddie and Peggy. In a way, though, her nobility makes Maddie's enlightenment even more bitter. Somehow, having our victims respond badly to our victimizing lets us off the hook: "She was a nasty person anyway." (I'll have to admit, part of me has always wondered if Wanda was being disingenuous or sarcastic in her final note. Was she deliberately putting the screws on Maddie and Peggy?)
This book is extraordinarily and deceptively powerful, with its combination of quiet tone, enchanting pictures, and hard-hitting (but not overbearing) message. Girls will be particularly intrigued and inspired by the dresses themselves; the idea is compelling, and many will want to draw their own dresses. Most children will, I think, want to focus on that aspect of the story, rather than on Maddie's learning experience. The dresses are so liberating, both for Wanda and for the child's imagination, that parents and teachers will want to encourage young readers to rejoice in that aspect of the story, even as they guide them through the sad and difficult emotional concepts presented in this lovely, but heartrending, book.
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