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Loading... A House of Tailorsby Patricia Reilly Giff
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  hgcslibrary | Nov 29, 2009 |  Dina hates sewing, but has a gift for it. When she is forced to leave Germany after being mistaken for a spy, she is at first happy to escape the endless sewing. However, upon her arrival at her uncle's house in Brooklyn, she learns that he is also a tailor, but poorer than her own father. Readers get a glimpse of America in the 1800's, seen through the eyes of an immigrant. (  ) mrsdwilliams | Oct 19, 2009 | When 13-yr-old Dina emigrates from Germany to America in 1871, her only wish is to return home as soon as she can. She is living with her uncle, his young wife and baby, and sewing to help support the family. She hates sewing and doesn't get along with her uncle. After she helps rescue the family from a fire, she starts her own business and begins to think of Brooklyn as her home. parkridgeya | Mar 19, 2008 | Dina, thirteen years old, in 1879, flees trouble in her small town in Germany to join her uncle's famiy in America. Her widowed mother makes her living by tailoring with the help of her children who frequently must sew night and day to meet customer deadlines. Dina is thrilled to think that she won't have to sew anymore in America. Things do not work out as Dina hoped. Her uncle does not seem happy to have her in his home. His plan for her is for her to help him with the sewing he has taken on, in addition to his regular job, in order to save for his own little shop. unbearably homesick in the miserable little New York tenement apartment of her uncle's family, Dina schemes to make every penny she can to get back to her mother and siblings in Germany. Cholera in her uncle's family, a fire in their tenament building, and a young man who comes into her life, conspire to keep her in America. ( ) FranCaroll | Nov 3, 2007 | A House of Tailors by Patricia Reilly Giff is loosely biographical telling the story of Giff's great grandmother. This weaving of fiction and truth is a little forced/implausible in the telling. Dina works for her mother and is a gifted seamstress, but absolutely hates it. The reader knows that Dina goes to America because either the back of the book or the flap will tell you that. The way that Dina ends up on the boat seemed contrived. But, that is the weakest part of the story. Dina is likeable in her complexity as are the other characters. These are not allegories or stock characters, you can feel them breathe. Though the benefactoress pushes it a little. Because Giff uses the experiences of her family, she doesn't have the freedom that she would if she were creating a story from scratch. I found that House of Tailors lacked the emotional wallop of Nory Ryan's Song and Lily's Crossing, but it is still a wonderful story to share about immigration towards the end of the nineteenth century. Originally posted on April 3, 2005 kconcannon | Sep 26, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English
1871, her only wish was to return to home as soon as she can, but as the months pass and she survives a multitude of hardships living with her aunt and uncle, she finds herself beginning to think of Brooklyn as home.