By Taylor Jasmine | On October 20, 2021 | Updated August 25, 2022 | Comments (0)
All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sidney Taylor (1951) is the first of a series of children’s books about the everyday lives of a tight-knit Jewish family at the turn of the 20th century. Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie are young sisters who live with their parents in the Lower East Side of New York City.
This story and its sequels smooth the rough edges of immigrant life, but the warmth and strength of the family unit sends the message that love and mutual respect can overcome many of life’s challenges. The girls occasional bicker, but their love and loyalty for one another is evident.
The five sisters love to do everything together, whether it’s going to the library to choose each week’s treasured books, interacting with peddlers in Papa’s junk shop on rainy days, or going on the rare outing with wise, patient Mama. Read More→
By Anna Fiore | On October 14, 2021 | Updated August 25, 2022 | Comments (3)
Marguerite Henry (1902–1997) was an American children’s book author who wrote some fifty-nine novels inspired by true stories of horses and other animals. Her most famous novel, Misty of Chincoteague (1947), was the first in a series of six stories centered around a wild palomino pony named Misty.
Set in the island town of Chincoteague, Virginia, the novel stars Misty and her mother (Phantom) along with brother and sister Paul and Maureen Beebe. While the book is a work of fiction, the story is based on real people and ponies of Chincoteague Island.
In 1948, Misty of Chincoteague received the Newbery Honor Award and went on to become a classic children’s horse story, right up there with Black Beauty. The book was a bestseller, reprinted numerous times, and is still in print.
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By Nava Atlas | On October 8, 2021 | Updated June 19, 2026 | Comments (4)
All This, and Heaven Too is the evocative title of Rachel Field’s 1938 historical novel, based on the life of her great-aunt Henriette Deluzy Desportes.
Though she passed away prematurely, Field manage to produce a prodigious array of works in several genres, including children’s books (notably the award-winning Hitty: Her First Hundred Years), poetry, plays, and novels.
If the title seems familiar, it may be in part thanks to the widely praised 1940 film of the same name starring Bette Davis in the role of the novel’s heroine. Read More→
By Anna Fiore | On September 26, 2021 | Updated September 30, 2022 | Comments (0)
Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) is recognized as one of the most groundbreaking modernist authors of the twentieth century. She is perhaps most widely known for iconic novels like Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and her semi-autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).
To the Lighthouse was Woolf’s fifth novel, and has remained one of her most highly regarded works.
Inspired by recollections of her childhood summers spent on the Cornwall coast, To the Lighthouse depicts the fictional Ramsey family and their assorted house guests spending a vacation in the Hebrides, on the island of Skye. Read More→
By Marcie McCauley | On August 22, 2021 | Updated February 7, 2026 | Comments (0)
The summer I was twelve, I pulled a well-read and worn book from the shelves of the public library and discovered a story that seemed to be told directly to me.
Behind the deceptively dull cover of Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912) were letters and drawings that pulled me hard and fast into Judy Abbott’s life—an orphan at boarding school.
So many of my favorite things were combined in this book: orphans and lonely childhoods, girls succeeding against the odds with their studious natures, boarding school and class events, and perhaps most of all, the burgeoning writer’s sensibility that I also enjoyed in Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy (1964).
I borrowed and devoured Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs that very afternoon; I’ve revisited it many times. Read More→
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