Eleven-year-old Rosey Sachs is worried about her school writing assignment. How can she write anything interesting about her ordinary life in Brooklyn? I was born in 1896 and my hair is brown, she writes. As these two things are also true for just about everyone in the class, they are not very interesting. A poem might have made her neighborhood sound a little more exciting, but to Rosey's dismay, she quickly discovers that Brooklyn doesn't rhyme with anything. But the plucky young girl keeps plugging away. Soon she realizes that the most wonderful things about Brooklyn have been right around her all along. In her loving aunts and uncles, the unfortunately named Itzy Carnitzky, her immigrant parents and the friends who pass through her small house, Rosey finds the best and most interesting materials for her assignment.
With gently humor and poignant detail, Joan W. Blos paints a heartwarming picture of Jewish life in New York in the years before World War I. The winner of both the Newbery Award and the American Book Award, Blos is the acclaimed author of many historical fictions for young people.
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"Grades 3+. At the request of her teacher, Edwina records the events in the lives of her Polish immigrant family and their friends living in Brooklyn in the early 1900s."
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Catherine (4 out of 5 stars)