Triptych: Pre-judging peers

In the three books The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester, and Crow Boy by Taro Yashima, a common lesson can be learned from these stories. From these three books the reader would learn that one should not judge others before knowing them, and that one should treat others with respect even if they are different.
In the book The Hundred Dresses, Wanda Petronski is ridiculed at school by her classmates for wearing the same worn dress everyday. When she tells them that she has one hundred dresses hung up in a line in her closet, students laugh and begin a game led by Peggy and Maddie, two classmates of Wanda. Everyday, the girls would ask, “How many dresses did you say you have?” When Wanda would answer they would burst out in laughter with the other children. When Peggy, Maddie, and the rest of the class find out that Wanda and her family are moving to another school so that they will not be made fun of anymore and that she indeed does have one hundred dresses in her closet, the two girls realize what their actions had meant to Wanda. They realize that what they had done was wrong and that Wanda was actually a very talented and nice young girl who didn’t deserve to be ostracized.
Tacky the Penguin tells the story of a penguin who dared to be different. Unlike the other penguins, Tacky enjoyed being an individual. He was eccentric and far from graceful. While Tacky wore vibrant shirts, sang obnoxious songs, and danced around rather than marching in straight lines, his fellow conformist penguins didn’t care for his company. They ignored him and made no effort to befriend him. While hunters try to capture the penguins that share Tacky’s iceberg, Tacky uses his unconventional skills to scare the hunters away. The rest of the penguins then realize that even though he is different, he has great qualities and they no longer judge his differences in a negative way.
Similar to The Hundred Dresses and Tacky the Penguin, Crow Boy is a story that highlights the affects of prejudgment. Set in a village located in Japan, Chibi attends school where even his teacher contributed to his feeling of loneliness. Chibi’s classmates called him names and never took the time to know him because he was different. Years go by and a new teacher of Chibi’s notices his hidden intelligences. This teacher spent time with the boy and realized that he knew so much about nature including how to imitate all different types of crow voices. One day, Chibi performs these voices for his class. After realizing that Chibi must know how to imitate all of the crows because he lives so far away and is incredibly lonely, Chibi’s classmates realize that they had been treating Chibi wrongly for all of these years. They realize that Chibi is in fact a wonderful child. Chibi’s classmates felt sorry for what they had done and now admired him for his talents and dedication.
Although each of the main characters in these three stories are very different, they all have one thing in common. Their peers have pre-judged them because they were different, they treated these three characters poorly. It takes an eye opening event for everyone to realize that what they had been doing was wrong and that Wanda, Tacky, and Chibi were very likeable friends after all.
These three books are intended for elementary level students to read. To build a safe and warm classroom community, any of the three books could be read to the class in the beginning of the year to teach children the lesson of pre-judgment and how it can affect an individual and even an entire class. It is easy to feel empathetic for these main characters throughout the story and therefore foster compassion and equality in a classroom.