pb/library

Another younger reader book, I love reading these. And another tear invoking ending. I really loved this book. I loved, especially, reading a book whose history is so physically close to me. My mother's business, that I worked at on and off for years, is located in one of the old mill buildings. I know the streets and mills, the river, the canal, the surrounding towns. It was also interesting to find a family that I know mentioned in the historic details of the strike, this family still engaged in the business that the family was running all those generations ago. Well, at least 2-3 generations. How had the details of this escaped me? In my defense, I didn't spend my younger years here, so I may have missed the attention paid to local history in elementary or middle school.

Katherine Paterson has written some of my favorite stories-Gilly Hopkins, Terabithia, Lyddie, but her most recent books have fallen flat with me. This was a good and interesting story, just not compelling. I've been to Barre, VT and the granite works, so that part was vivid for me, but historical fiction can be a tough genre. You need to capture an event accurately, but also create characters that will resonate with contemporary children. I don't think this one does.

I almost always enjoy historical fiction, and this was a piece of American history I'd never heard of before. During a strike at several mills in MA during the Industrial Revolution, children were actually sent away to different parts of the East coast where they would have food and heat...two things nearly impossible to come by because of the strike. I would recommend this book for readers in fifth or sixth grade and up.

This book explores the struggle of factory workers as unions were forming. The tone of the book is light enough that the weighty material doesn't seem traumatic, and the ending is hopeful.

I hadn't put down that I actually finished this book months ago- oops. But it honestly might have taken me that long if it weren't a book I had to read for school.

The characterization in this book was pretty awful. Rosa was also a very flat character, who didn't interest me at all. She felt like a Mary Sue, where her one flaw was… I don't know, wanting to keep her family safe? Is that even a flaw?

Jake was the only person in this book worth reading about- it's a shame that a good two thirds of the book were taken up by Rosa's constant worrying and idiocy. I'd bump my rating up a few stars if we got more about Jake's actual moral and psychological dilemmas, but instead we got Rosa whining about her uneducated family fighting for their rights.


Now, the plot. Oh, boy. It was so incredibly repetitive. Incredibly so. So awful. Too much repetition. No, honestly. It was as repetitive as this paragraph has been over the past couple of sentences. It was agonizing, hearing Rosa's constantly fuss over the existence of the picket lines. She doesn't like her family being there. And, as a result, the reader gets to hear about that for two thirds of the book. And, even though I didn't hate Jake at all, it was irritating to just watch him continuously go through the motions of the picket lines, when all I wanted was a bit more of his internal character. "Wait," you say. "When you picked up this book, didn't you expect there to be a lot about the picket lines? What did you think would be in a book about the Bread and Roses Strike?"

Honestly? I read the blurb, I read the back, and I more or less thought it was going to be about the experiences of two children getting sent to Vermont to get away from the strikes. I thought it would be about their lives there, and how they coped with being stuck away from their city. I thought we'd see Jake and Rosa bond over their time spend there. Boy, was I wrong. Two thirds of this book was spent back in Lawerence, and a good two thirds of THAT chunk was spent hearing about Rosa's miserable, educated life. When I finally got to see them head to Vermont, it was, again, a let down. I got to read about Rosa being super pretentious, with a small piece about Jake growing as a person. And then, there's no great conclusion. It was just… awful. In every way. Please, save yourself some time and don't read this monstrosity.

Bread and Roses too, is a historical novel explaining the lives of two characters Jake Beale and Rosa Serutti. The story tells the struggles the characters faced during the Lawrence Labor Strike. The stories history as explained in the historical note talks about real characters in history such as Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti. The history adds to the book because it informs the reader of the actual hardships faced by woman and children during the strike. It is definetely important to read the historical note in the back of the book before beginning to understand people and events that occur in the novel. Things such as the figuritive language, like similes and metaphors made the book interesting and fun to read. The story shows both sides of the strike. It shows people against the strike, people for the strike,and some undecided. Rosa is a good character to relate to in terms of struggling with her conscience like people do today. The only bad thing about this novel is that in the beginning it was difficult to really want to keep reading. After a few chapters however, the book began to speed up and became a real page turner. Bread and Roses Too, is a great story showing the unity of the nation when the labor workers decide to go on strike and fight for better conditions in which they greatly deserved.

So, I couldn't relate to this book at all. The problems she faces were way worse than the ones I've had in my life. And it was really hard for me to even enjoy the book till about the last 50 pages. I'm just not one to enjoy depressing reading; is anyone? I really liked how it talked about morals and the respect you should show for others.

Slow start getting involved with what seemed to be stereotypical characters. However, once the strike happened, it was very interesting to find out what happened to the children. The reader had a good command of a variety of dialects which made the story come alive.

This was a sad, yet happy book. Rosa is the child of Italian Immigrants, and she lives in the slums. Because her father has died in the mills, her mother has stopped sining. But now her mother is singing again. But, instead of singing italian llulabies, she is singing union songs. Rosa has to decide what she thinks about the strike. When Rosa is sent to Vermont until the strike ends, she must endure the ultimate test.

Though this book appears to be a well-researched look at the lives of millworkers in the early 1900's, it is so very depressing to read. The conditions they lived with were horrific, and there is no silver lining to be found until the end of the book. So if you enjoy reading about starving, abused, and exploited children, this book is for you. :(

This was interesting since I didn't know much about the strike at the Lawrence mills. Now that I'm an adult, I hardly read young adult books anymore (Harry Potter and Hunger Games don't count) so it was a blast from the past to read such a simple book about good and evil.

However, now that I'm an adult, it would be interesting to read about this in a book written for grown-ups - I'm sure it would be complex.

I enjoyed this historical fiction for young readers, recommended by my daughter, who chose to write about it for a school assignment. Interestingly, she focused on the Italian-American and Roman Catholic background of one of the main characters, rather than on the book's recounting of the early 20th century Labor movement.
(N.B., I was frustrated by a tantalizing typo within the final paragraphs of this hardcover edition: a 3-line paragraph was included twice, and about the same number of lines of a subsequent paragraph were obviously omitted! Poor copy editing, complains one who does it for a living.)