Streets of Gold
by Rosemary Wells
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Based on a memoir written in the early twentieth century, tells the story of a young girl and her life in Russia, her travels to America, and her subsequent life in the United States.Tags
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Streets of Gold is a lengthier picture book than most that we see. There is so much detail about Masha's (Mary's) experience and feelings about her original home in Russia and her made home in Boston, USA. Wells is clearly passionate about this story and pulls text from Mary Antin's own book The Promised Land to pair with her description of her physical and emotional voyage. Wells is careful to not over glorify the US. She mentions from Antin's perspective that although she is fascinated with and grateful for her new American life, it is not simply a walk in the park. She is working at a grocery while attending school, their home is in a rougher part of town with lots of garbage and opium dens, and that a pair of shoes for her brother show more are a weeks pay for her father. But equal with these hardships there is opportunity and definitely no secret police. Although this story is set in the 1890s, it is a story of emigration that applies throughout time. Antin's 5,000 mile journey of trains and boats still occur today for people to come to America and I am sure they are frequently treated poorly along the way. The illustrations do a good job giving imagery to the text but is clearly there to illustrate what the touching prose is attempting to give rather than be its own part of the book. As a book about a girl who is a writer, the words are the important part rather than the imagery. show less
Based on Mary Antin's memoir, The Promised Land, Rosemary Wells tells the story of a young Russian Jewish girl: growing up in Russia, traveling with her mother and brother to join her father in Boston, and writing a 35-stanza poem soon after learning English in school. The poem was good enough to be published in the Boston Herald. Sidebars have quotes from Antin's The Promised Land. The pictures are detailed and give a good sense of the time and places.
Beautiful, touching story about Masha and her life as she travels to America and her life in the United States. This is a really great story with a lot of information about this time.
Based on Mary Antin's classic immigration memoir, The Promised Land (1912), this story describes a young girl's adaptation to American life and her love for her adopted country.
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According to the author’s note, this unusual picture book is based on The Promised Land (1912), a memoir by Mary (born Masha) Antin, who emigrated from Russia to America in 1894 at age twelve. Brief quotations from Antin’s account of her life accompany each page of Wells’ “shortened and simplified” first-person narration, which details the oppression of Jews in Russia, where “our show more fathers were told what kind of work they could do,” “our brothers were stolen by the Czar’s army when they were still little boys,” “only short-nosed Jewish boys could attend school,” and “Jewish girls are not allowed” to attend school at all. Once Masha gets to America, the narration focuses in a conventional way on the educational opportunities she found there. Wells also transmits what was presumably Antin’s unquestioning acceptance of the need for assimilation when her first-person narrator tells us without comment that “my name was changed to an American name, Mary, so that I would fit in with everyone else.” However, the story does not gloss over the squalor of the Antins’ Boston home, where she has to beware of the “thieves and dope addicts” in the alleys. The interesting textures and perspectives of the warm, realistic full-page oil paintings facing each page of text evoke the old and the new country with appropriate nostalgia but without clichés. Illustrations in the sections of the book set in Russia emphasize the closeness of Masha and her father while Mary’s growing independence is emphasized in the latter section. Paintings and a map of their journey by land and by sea provide a transition between these sections and visually convey the vastness of the distance from Russia to America. (Reviewed from galleys) Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 1999, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1999, Dial, 40p, $16.99. Grades 3-6. show less
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Rosemary Wells was born in New York City on January 29, 1943. She studied at the Museum School in Boston. Without her degree, she left school at the age of 19 to get married. She began her career in publishing, working as an art editor and designer first at Allyn and Bacon and later at Macmillan Publishing. She is an author and illustrator of over show more 60 books for children and young adults. Her first book was an illustrated edition of Gilbert and Sullivan's I Have a Song to Sing-O. Her other works include Martha's Birthday, The Fog Comes on Little Pig Feet, Unfortunately Harriet, Mary on Horseback, and Timothy Goes to School. She also created the characters of Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, and Yoko, which are featured in some of her books. She has won numerous awards including a Children's Book Council Award for Noisy Nora in 1974, the Edgar Allan Poe award for two young adult books, Through the Looking Glass and When No One Was Looking, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Shy Charles. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Streets of Gold
- Original publication date
- 1999
- People/Characters
- Mary Antin
- Dedication
- To Jacqueline Herchenroder, 1946-1996
Children's Librarian --- R.W.
For Al, with many thanks --- D.A.
Joe Haberer - First words
- Long ago and far away in Russia my father held me in his arms.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I loved my city and my place in the world. Then I used my new language, English,
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- 135
- Popularity
- 242,109
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (4.46)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
