Allegra Maud Goldman

This is an absolutely delightful semi-fictionalized memoir — though based very closely on the author's own life — of a precocious little girl in 1930s Brooklyn. It's a classic coming-of-age saga, but you'll quickly fall in love with Allega — she's sassy, funny, and more insightful than most adults. This was first published in the 1970s, but if you can, get the newly published 25th-anniversary edition — it contains some interesting essays about the book and the author.

Some favorite quotes:

In one [game], we formed a vicious circle and, whooping, hurled a volleyball at an unlucky classmate named It who was in the center of the circle, desperately trying to avoid being hit. This was a useful lesson in cruelty, meant, I imagine, to prepare us for the day when we would want to join our fellow townsfolk in stoning the village idiot to death. [p. 19]

If Grandma Goldman ever smiled, she must have done it in the bathroom with the door locked. She had been the undisputed head of her own family, ruling with an iron hand and a mouth full of rocks. [p. 118]

I couldn't help wondering what else lay buried, damned up forever by the circumstances of his life, in my father's genes, cells, chromosomes--wherever it is show more that talent, and maybe even genius, reside, whimpering for a while before they suffocatge and die. [p. 127]

... what Grandma had seen usually bore little relationship to what I had seen [at a movie]. It was often some peripheral detail buried in a subplot that loomed largest for Grandma. [p. 157] show less

A novel about a high-spirited and adventurous daughter in a relatively well-off Jewish family in the mid-1900's with a mutitutde of problems.