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 cultu