By Eleanor Estes
A short Newbery Honor classic about a poor immigrant girl mocked at school, told through the classmate who went along with it and later wished she hadn't.
Wanda Petronski wears the same faded blue dress to school every day and sits off in the corner where the muddy shoes go. One day the other girls corner her, and she blurts out that she has a hundred dresses at home, all lined up in her closet. It isn't true the way they take it, and they tease her about it day after day, for being poor and for having a name none of them will say right. But the book isn't told from Wanda's side. You watch through Maddie, a girl who isn't the ringleader but laughs when the others laugh and never says a word to stop it. Then Wanda stops coming to school. Her family has moved away, and it's too late to take any of it back.
What makes this one land is the point of view. Because you're inside Maddie's head and not Wanda's, the book doesn't hand a child an easy role. You're not watching a villain, and you're not watching a victim you can safely feel sorry for. You're watching the ordinary girl who just went along, which is a position most children have actually been in. It's very short, so a strong reader of eight or nine can manage the words, and its age barely shows. It does its quiet work best with a grown-up nearby to talk about it.