All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor

Charlie: Papa's friend, a junk peddler with a mysterious past.

Kathy Allen: A librarian at the local library who befriends the girls.

Papa: The girls' father, who runs a junk shop.

Mama: The girls' mother, a resourceful homemaker.

Gertie: The youngest of the five sisters, age 4.

Charlotte: The younger sister with her head in the clouds, age 6.

Sarah: The middle sister, and the author's avatar.

Ella: The oldest of the five sisters, at age 12.

They also inadvertently help their father's friend Charlie solve a mystery from his past and, in the end, welcome a new family member. The book follows them through a year of their childhood, as they deal with mundane chores, find joy in eating candy in bed and collecting used books from their father's junk shop, recover from scarlet fever, and celebrate Jewish holidays such as Purim and Sukkot as well as the Fourth of July. PlotĮlla, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertrude are five sisters growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1912. 'Not only are Jewish customs explained honestly and frankly, but Taylor makes them attractive and positive, drawing in her readers, both Jewish and non-Jewish,' the scholar June Cummins writes. The book is noteworthy for its depiction of a joint Jewish American identity, with the characters expressing both pride in their Jewish traditions and American patriotism, following the trajectory of Taylor's own family's assimilation. Follett Award in 1951, and it won, launching Taylor's career and what would become a five-book series. But, the story goes, her husband secretly submitted the manuscript for the Charles W. While Taylor wrote All-of-a-Kind Family for her daughter, by some accounts she had no plans to publish the story. Perhaps in this way I could re-create for both of us some feeling of that other life.' But the past was dead there it lived only in me.

'I took my daughter Jo down to the old neighborhood where Papa, Mama and the five little girls had lived. The book's genesis was stories of her childhood that Taylor would tell her daughter, Jo.

All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor