All-of-a-Kind Family

First re-read of this book in years uncountable.

This is the book from which I first learned about the Jewish faith. As a little heathen child, I'd been dragged to various Christian churches by friends and cousins, and I knew (I thought) all about that religion which was boring, boring, boring. But this...nobody I knew ever built a little bitty house in their backyard. Or got to eat parsley dipped in salt water. I was fascinated.

Not only was I a little heathen, I was also a little singleton. Reading this story of 5 close and loving sisters made me envious and amazed. Mama was patient, she was kind, she was wise, she was gentle. She was perfect! Papa was all those things, too, plus he had crinkly eye-corners when he smiled! And the pushcarts! The Library Lady! Dusting for buttons! Coney Is-land! I'm sure I read this book at least 30 times before I turned 14. I don't think I've read it since.

I sank back into it with a sigh. They were all still there in New York in 1912, waiting for me. Only this time, I was different. I watched Mama, and I marveled. I know now that Taylor based this family on her own, and I wonder more about some of the stories. Mama worked so hard, so long, and was so incredibly patient. The family's poverty resonates more with me now, and I see what passes between Mama and Papa when they worry about money. And when 4 of the girls are down with Scarlet Fever? What must have gone through her mind that never showed? What about all that sewing? Five girls? That's a lot of little girls to raise on a junkman's iffy income. The picture painted with this book is full of depth and compassion and love. Taylor's writing appears effortless. The illustrations are lovely, too.

It's a wonderful book. It evokes an era that's gone forever, and it does it without undue sentimentality and nostalgia. The hardship is right there for those with eyes to see, but so is the love. This family is a whole, functioning, happy family, and it's a delight to join it for an hour. In fact, I'm about to go read the rest of the series, so I'll be joining it for a few days. Lucky me. You should be so lucky.

Also? The chick pea man! I love the chick pea man: "Arbis! Shaynicke, guttinke arbislach! Keuf meine heise arbis!"

I just introduced this stellar series to a fourth grade Little House reader and she came back with stars in her eyes. Ella, Henny, Charlotte, Sarah, Gertie and Charlie, the sweetest little family on the Lower East Side, you did it again.

I love, LOVE this series! If you want something fun and engaging to read to your family, you'll certainly want to check these out. The children are all wonderfully enjoyable and they learn some valuable lessons along the way. You'll discover what New York City was like at the turn of the century and experience many Jewish costums too.

Ages: 5 - 12

Cleanliness:

Children's Bad Words
Mild Obscenities and Substitutions - 1 Incident: heck
Name Calling - 2 Incidents: slowpoke, foolish
Religious Profanity - 2 Incidents: gosh

Attitudes/Disobedience - 5 Incidents: Bad attitude/getting out of school: "All right, then. I'll have a swell excuse when the teacher asks me why I haven't finished my homework. I'll say my mother took up all my time with dusting." Anger/Unforgiving: Two friends are always fighting. The one girl says she's not going to be glad about their friendship ever again. When her sister says she'll have to forgive at Yom Kippur, the little girl says that's a long ways off. Bad attitude while obeying: "Henny pouted. She stamped her feet" while she did the dishes. A little girl doesn't want to eat her food: "I'll choke on it if I eat it, ... I don't want it. I don't want it!" Her voice rose higher and she got stubborn about not eating it. Jealousy: The youngest girl is upset when her mother has a baby because she's not the "baby" any longer.

Romance Related - 11 Incidents: A twelve-year-old girl has a crush on a mid-twenties man who works at her father's shop: "The children adored Charlie too, especially Ella, who lately had begun to gaze at him with bright and shiny eyes and hang upon his every word." Ella thinks how wonderful Sabbath would be if Charlie were there too and asks her mom if he's coming. A little girl's underwear peeked out from her skirt. Charlie takes Ella's hands and tells her she has a fine singing voice. "Ella blushed furiously and her heart pounded. Charlie was holding her hands. Charlie was saying something wonderful about her." Ella wants to fix her hair again before Charlie comes. "Charlie quarreled with his parents about a girl he wanted to marry. They wanted him to marry another girl. Charlie's girl learned that his parents opposed their marriage, and she just went away." ... Charlie was very angry at his parents and left home, left his career, old friends, and changed his name. Ella cried when she found out about her "idol Charlie's having a sweetheart." Ella cries in bed: "tears for Charlie's unhappiness, tears for herself, for now she knew that Charlie was not really her Charlie. His heart belonged to somebody else." "Ella sat quietly thinking about Charlie. After the first shock of discovering about his sweetheart, Ella's thoughts had been captivated with the romance, imagining various happy endings to the affair." "For a fleeting moment, Ella felt again the pain of that night when Papa had first told her about Charlie." A man puts his hands around a lady's face and kisses her.

Conversation Topics - 7 Incidents: Men sit around chewing tobacco. Mama grabs red wine for them to drink during the Sabbath meal. Papa and everyone drinks wine for the Sabbath. Snuff: "It was a mingled smell of tabac, a snuff used freely by the older members of the congregation. The family drinks wine for the first Seder night. The family drinks wine for the first Seder night. "Charlie quarreled with his parents about a girl he wanted to marry. They wanted him to marry another girl. Charlie's girl learned that his parents opposed their marriage, and she just went away." ... Charlie was very angry at his parents and left home, left his career, old friends, and changed his name.

Parent Takeaway
A sweet story about a loving family and how the father and mother purposefully run their home. The narration includes comments in the style of, "Henny knew she was being naughty and felt bad afterwards." There is always conclusions to wrong behaviors. The "crush" that the oldest daughter has, even has a conclusion with her parents talking over the issue with her (indirectly). The boy/girl mentions are not fantasized or lengthy.

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The cutest! Loved the girls' unique personalities.

Sydney Taylor’s fictionalised account of her childhood revolves around New York’s Lower East Side and its bustling Jewish community in the early to mid-1900s: where Taylor the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants grew up. When Taylor’s book was accepted for publication in the early 1950s, it was a tense time for Jewish-Americans, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had been arrested as communist spies and reporting of their case frequently emphasized their Jewish backgrounds, provoking extensive fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. The anxieties of this era are evident in Taylor’s editor’s concerns that the Jewish family at the novel’s heart weren’t American enough, requiring Taylor to alter her manuscript to include Fourth of July celebrations alongside her existing, detailed accounts of Jewish holidays, as well as a love story between two non-Jewish characters. But these additions now seem peripheral to Taylor’s narrative which found enough of a readership to sustain four sequels, often cited as the beginning of modern children’s literature featuring Jewish life. Although the kinds of cultural pressures and tensions reflected in its editing are still far too familiar.

Taylor’s novel centres on five sisters and their everyday experiences, it’s a disarmingly direct piece, simply told, echoing its origins in the bedtime stories Taylor constructed for her daughter who was eager to hear about children like her. It works on a number of levels: as an outstanding cultural and social history of working-class, Jewish New York from the food the family eats to the Yiddish-speaking markets where their mother bargains for groceries, as well as revealing - sometimes jarringly so - the ways in which ethnic or religious divides defined newly-immigrant families, the Italian, Polish and other families trying to find a foothold in America; and as an exceptionally charming children’s story with wonderfully relatable, vividly-drawn characters, accompanied by a wealth of evocative illustrations by Helen John.

It’s a cute book

According to an online quiz, I'm Henny. I doubt that very much, as pretty much all we share is curly hair, but it reminded me that I wanted to re-read this book. I remember each bit so clearly, and loved the stories of growing up in a large family in turn of the century New York. As a child, pretty much everything I knew about Judaism was gleaned from this book. Just wonderful stories, a loving family, and lasting memories. Sigh.

Sweet, classic read aloud. Would be a good bedtime read since the chapters are only loosely connected (you don’t need to keep up momentum). We loved experiencing their celebration of the Jewish holidays. Especially fun for houses with many girlies like ours