Generations of author Ellen Weinstein’s family have lived on New York’s Lower East Side for the past 120 years, and Weinstein still lives there today. Based on her grandmother’s experiences as a newcomer from Russia to that neighborhood, and on the myriad stories of immigrants and refugees from around the world who settled there, this cleverly formatted children’s picture book narrates, over a period of 100 years, the stories of five children as they live on five different stories of one apartment building. Though Weinstein’s portrait of her grandmother is true, the other four children are fictional derivatives of true stories.
Weinstein expertly shows the interconnectedness between people from different nations and cultures by focusing on what they have in common (even though variations abound): family, near and far away; food; music; traditions; religious beliefs; desire for education; and the need for employment and a place to live.
Weinstein’s instructive narrative and lushly detailed illustrations introduce children to Jenny Epstein in the 1910s, Anna Cozzi in the 1930s, Jose Marte in the 1960s, Maria Torres in the 1980s, and Wei Ye in the present day. As Weinstein follows the stories of these five children from Russia, Italy, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and China, she shows how their lives become interconnected: Jenny Epstein becomes young Anna Cozzi’s teacher; Anna Cozzi becomes a star soprano for the Metropolitan Opera, which Jose Marte attends as a young boy; and Wei Ye buys comic books from store owner Maria Torres.
In Five Stories, children and the adults who read to them have the opportunity to celebrate God’s marvelous creation of people from every nation, and to explore the ways they flourish as newcomers in their varying cultural contexts. (Holiday House)
About the Author
Ann Byle is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens. She is a freelance writer and author of several other books, magazine articles, and reviews. She lives in Grand Rapids, Mich.