Review: Five Stories
Five Stories
written and illustrated by Ellen Weinstein
Holiday House, 2024
Category: Picture Books
Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer
Buy at Bookshop.org
The Lower East Side holds a special place in Jewish-American history, memory, and imagination. After all, the award for best Jewish children’s books (and therefore this blog), gets its very name from the author of books set there. From those books to the movie Crossing Delancey, the Lower East Side exists both as a real location (I should know - I grew up there!) and a mythical place.
But the Lower East Side was not, and is not, home to just Jews. In Five Stories, Ellen Weinstein traces the history of the different waves of immigration to this neighborhood by following one family from each wave: Jewish, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese. Playing on the word “story,” she shows them residing on different floors of the same building. She emphasizes how music, food, and language kept all of these immigrants connected to their cultures.
Weinstein brings the Lower East side of each era to life with her vibrant, realistic illustrations and period details in both the interiors of the apartments and the stores and restaurants in the neighborhood. Primarily Jewish institutions, such as Katz’s deli, Russ & Daughters appetizing, and Judaica shops are joined by Italian ones selling fresh mozzarella, followed by bodegas and farmacias and restaurants advertising cuchifritos, then Chinese noodle shops, and finally art galleries. We witness the passage of time as clothing and car styles change, through newspaper headlines, and as hula hoops and stick ball give way to double-dutch. Weinstein also shows the children of the previous era grow and become the opera stars or state senators of the next. The last child featured, a Chinese immigrant, discovers a rocking horse left by the first, a Jewish immigrant, in the now-vacant first-floor apartment, causing him to wonder who had left it there… and who will move into that apartment next.
Given that only one of the five families featured in this book is Jewish, I am not sure it is a contender for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. However, it would be great to read aloud with a class in advance of a visit to the area or any of its cultural institutions like the Tenement Museum or the Eldridge Street Synagogue.
Rachel J. Fremmer is a lawyer-turned-elementary-school librarian. She is a native-and-forever New Yorker and lives there with her husband and two daughters, ages 18 and 16, who are rapidly outgrowing her area of book expertise. She is continually inspired by the city even though apartment living means she is running out of room for her picture book collection. She was selected by PJ Library for their inaugural Picture Book Summer Camp for Emerging Writers. When she is not reading or writing, she is baking or doing crossword puzzles.
The Lower East Side holds a special place in Jewish-American history, memory, and imagination. After all, the award for best Jewish children’s books (and therefore this blog), gets its very name from the author of books set there. From those books to the movie Crossing Delancey, the Lower East Side exists both as a real location (I should know - I grew up there!) and a mythical place.
But the Lower East Side was not, and is not, home to just Jews. In Five Stories, Ellen Weinstein traces the history of the different waves of immigration to this neighborhood by following one family from each wave: Jewish, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese. Playing on the word “story,” she shows them residing on different floors of the same building. She emphasizes how music, food, and language kept all of these immigrants connected to their cultures.
Weinstein brings the Lower East side of each era to life with her vibrant, realistic illustrations and period details in both the interiors of the apartments and the stores and restaurants in the neighborhood. Primarily Jewish institutions, such as Katz’s deli, Russ & Daughters appetizing, and Judaica shops are joined by Italian ones selling fresh mozzarella, followed by bodegas and farmacias and restaurants advertising cuchifritos, then Chinese noodle shops, and finally art galleries. We witness the passage of time as clothing and car styles change, through newspaper headlines, and as hula hoops and stick ball give way to double-dutch. Weinstein also shows the children of the previous era grow and become the opera stars or state senators of the next. The last child featured, a Chinese immigrant, discovers a rocking horse left by the first, a Jewish immigrant, in the now-vacant first-floor apartment, causing him to wonder who had left it there… and who will move into that apartment next.
Given that only one of the five families featured in this book is Jewish, I am not sure it is a contender for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. However, it would be great to read aloud with a class in advance of a visit to the area or any of its cultural institutions like the Tenement Museum or the Eldridge Street Synagogue.
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