Mini review.

I think I would have enjoyed this more if I had read this when I was small and been less aware of the slightly stilted dialogue and characterization – but nevertheless, a sweet little book and fascinating look into the daily lives of Jewish family around the turn of the century. Definitely a book that I would share with young readers!

This was a charming story about a Jewish family of girls. I loved learning a little bit about Jewish customs.

What an absolutely delightful book!

I loved this book!! Such a sweet, wholesome book about family life. The parts about all the Jewish feast and celebrations was really interesting too. My kids loved the book too - especially the dialogue between the 5 sisters.

What a delightful read! Although this book was published in 1951, the year after I had started school, I had only read references to it or excerpts from it, until my 8-year-old granddaughter highly recommended it. She loved Ella, Henny, Charlotte, Sarah, and Gertie, the five girls in Sydney Taylor's family that is "close and loving and loyal," where harmony prevails, where faith is lived out in every aspect of life, where life is an adventure. My granddaughters love going to the library, just like these girls do. I recall that same excitement when the bookmobile came to our elementary school. And I shared their love of books, old or new, both as a child and now.

Taylor wrote a five book series about this family, published over a period of 20 years. This series was the most widely known stories about Jewish children during the last five decades.

Helen John's charming illustrations add a lovely visual element, capturing vignettes of daily life.

Francine Prose's Introduction lures the reader into the uniqueness of this family. As she makes her own connections with the girls and their reactions to their life experiences, she also asserts that the book is "a hymn . . . to the ordinary pleasures of daily life. Everything, no matter how small, is an adventure for these girls, and their parents, especially Mama, are extraordinarily skilled at investing the mundane with the marvelous." She goes on to say that "the book is a vision of family life at its best, of the ways in which imagination, energy, creativity, inspiration--and of course, love--can transform the most routine moment into something memorable and precious."

This story extols the family and home with its simple pleasures and surprises, yet with little extra money to spare for luxuries--without television, computers, video games, smart phones. Family, faith, and friends are the values around which life happily rotates.

This was the book that I repeatedly checked out from my elementary school library. I can still see the shelf where it was located. I loved this book, I think maybe because I had 2 brothers and no sisters and I loved peeking into their relationships with each other.

This is a series I reread every year. No one else has ever captured the early 1900's in the Jewish lower side of New York like this, and it's fascinating to read about the holidays and customs and everyday life that this little troop of girls experiences. I still wish I could walk through those streets teeming with peddlers selling big dill pickles, candied orange slices, and spiced chick peas!

These books are great for those who love old-fashioned stories about growing up, like the Little House, Ginnie and Geneva, Betsy-Tacy, Moffats, or Beverly Cleary books. These authors understood that everyday life at home and in school held wonderful adventures and mysteries all their own.

A nice, quiet read for another sleepless night, this story of a Jewish family on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the 20th century puts the "chapter" in "chapter book"--in the sense that each chapter can be read as a unit. That's my one complaint; there isn't really a unifying thread, or if there is, it feels chopped off at the end of each chapter, and the following one begins a completely different vignette with little to no sense of flow. The Gentile romance thread felt shoehorned in.

Interesting, particularly if the reader wants to learn about Jewish customs and holidays in a bitesize, family-oriented format. Tt would work as a family read-aloud. But, I dunno--there just seemed to be something missing. It didn't feel like a novel so much as a patchwork of scenes. Granted, I finished this at 5 AM, perhaps I was predisposed to be annoyed by the "oh goody we finally have a boy after all those useless girls!" thing. It might be a knee-jerk reaction on my part, having been the last in a large family that really wanted another boy instead of what they got, which was me.

Maybe the next installment will fill in some of the gaps for me.

What a cute, happy old-timey story about a close-knit Jewish family and their adventures and struggles. I loved how each girl had a unique personality and I loved the glimpse into Jewish holiday celebration. Even as an adult, I love reading cozy family stories such as this one.

This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.

Mama has five girls: Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie, and because there are no boys, they call themselves an “all-of-a-kind family.” The family doesn’t have very much money, but they still have lots to be happy about. The girls visit the library regularly, where they are always glad to see their friend, the library lady. They have a wonderful relationship with their father’s best friend, Charlie, who gives them treats when they are sick and often comes around for dinner on holidays. They even get a little bit of money now and then to spend on secret candy to eat in bed, and to buy gifts for their father’s birthday. Throughout the year, the girls keep busy and make the best of what they do have - wonderful friends, and each other.

This first book in the All-of-a-Kind-Family series was written in the 1950s, but it takes place during the year 1912. Despite the age of the story and the fact that it is historical fiction, it is a fresh and accessible book, even today. Though the girls in the story are poor and living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, they have many experiences that can be universally appreciated by children from all backgrounds, living in urban and rural environments. Each chapter consists of a particularly memorable episode in the family’s life, including things like the loss of a library book, the discovery of old books in their father’s warehouse, and missing out on the Passover seder because of scarlet fever. Readers learn not only what life was like for immigrants living in early 20th century New York, but also all about Jewish tradition and celebrations throughout the year. Though the girls in the story lived 100 years ago, they have many qualities, interests, and worries that contemporary kids undoubtedly share.

The All-of-a-Kind Family is a great fictional representation of growing up in a Jewish family, as well as a sweet celebration of sisterhood. There are some surprise twists at the end of the book that bring together details and characters from earlier chapters, and I didn’t see any of those coming, so I was very pleased by that. I also like how quickly the story moves, and the upbeat tone that provides a sense of hope in difficult circumstances without becoming overly sentimental about city living or poverty. Readers who are anxiously awaiting another installment in the Penderwicks series might enjoy reading about the All-of-a-Kind Family - a series with six books in all - while they wait. It might also appeal to fans of Megan McDonald’s Sisters Club books, and to readers who enjoy The Boxcar Children, The Bobbsey Twins, and Betsy-Tacy.

Lovely children's book. Sweet, cute, and funny. I love reading children's books sometimes - nostalgic and therapeutic.

We all loved this book. Even Mr. T was always excited to tell Mike about it in the evenings. The five girls in the story are so sweet. The story is simple but was told so delightfully we could could hardly wait for the next chapter. We also enjoyed getting a peek into Jewish family life. Great characters.