Bread and Roses, Too - Hardcover

Paterson, Katherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618654798 ISBN 13: 9780618654796

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2006

Synopsis

Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. By the author of The Same Stuff as Stars.

About this title

About the Author

Katherine Paterson’s international fame rests not only on her widely acclaimed novels but also on her efforts to promote literacy in the U.S. and abroad. A two-time winner of the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award, she was the 1998 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal and was recently given the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by her home state of Vermont. Her latest novel for Clarion was The Same Stuff as Stars.
She lives in Barre, Vermont, where part of this story takes place.
Katherine Paterson is the recipient of the 2006 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which celebrates her life’s work. For more infromation visit www.terabithia.com.

Reviews

Starred Review. Grade 5-8–Paterson has drawn upon the facts of the famous 1912 Bread and Roses strike in the mills of Lawrence, MA, and the sympathetic response of the citizens of Barre, VT, to tell the story of two children enmeshed in complex events. Rosa Seruttis mother and older sister work in the mills and are joining the protest against unfair labor practices. Jake Beale works there to keep himself and his alcoholic father alive. As the strike turns ugly, arrangements are made for children to leave Lawrence temporarily, and Rosa is sent to an elderly couple, the Gerbatis, in Barre. After a terrifying incident in which he finds his father dead, Jake sneaks onto the train, mistaking its destination as New York City. He convinces Rosa to say he is her older brother and to persuade the Gerbatis to keep him, too. Illiterate Sal begs off going to school, working instead in Mr. Gerbatis stonecutting business where, despite fair treatment, the temptation to steal overwhelms him. Caught in the act, he learns that the forbidding man is really a compassionate soul who gives him the chance he needs to make a new life for himself. Paterson has skillfully woven true events and real historical figures into the fictional story and created vivid settings, clearly drawn characters, and a strong sense of the hardship and injustice faced by the mostly immigrant mill workers. Ethnic rivalries and prejudices play an important role, and the alternating points of view of Rosa and Jake allow for a broader picture and add tension and balance.–Marie Orlando, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 5-8. Rosa, 12, wants to be an educated "civilized" American and she hates it when her militant Italian immigrant mother and sister join the mill workers' strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. Jake, 13, is native-born and homeless, trying to work, sometimes finding shelter in Rosa's crowded tenement home. From the two kids' alternating viewpoints--angry, kind, desperate--Paterson brings close the labor history, especially the role of women and children, their work and daily struggle, and their drive to form a union, led by famous anarchist ("atheist!") strike leaders from across the country. In the second part of the book the children are sent to safety with sympathetic Italian American families in Barre, Vermont, where Jake finds a loving home and satisfying work at last. The immigrant labor struggle is stirring and dramatic, with connections to contemporary issues: prejudice against immigrants (in this case, "wops"); newcomers' struggling with English. In a lengthy note Paterson fills in the exciting union history, but as in The Great Gilly Hopkins (1987), it is the kindness between the mean foster kid and a tough, needy adult (a dad this time) that breaks your heart. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One Shoe Girl

The tenements loomed toward the sky on either side of the alley like glowering giants, but they’d keep the wind off. There was plenty of trash in the narrow space between them. It stank to high heaven, but, then, so did he. He began to burrow into the heap like a rat. A number of rodents squawked and scrambled away. Hell’s bells! He hoped they wouldn’t bite him while he was asleep. Rat bites hurt like fury.
For a moment he stopped digging, but the freezing air drove him farther in.
He tried to warm himself by cursing his pa. The words inside his head were hot as flaming hades, but they didn’t fool his hands and feet, which ached from the cold.
He’d heard of people freezing to death in their sleep. It happened to drunks all the time. He sometimes even wished it would happen to his pa, although he knew it was wicked to wish your own pa dead. But how could Jake be expected to care whether the brute lived or died? The man did nothing but beat him. Dead, he wouldn’t beat me or steal all my pay for drink―and then beat me for not earning more. He was keeping himself agitated, if not warm, with hateful thoughts of the old man when he heard light footsteps close by. He willed himself motionless.
It was a small person from the sound, and coming right for his pile. You can’t have my pile. This one’s mine. I already claimed it. I chased the rats for it. I made my nest in it. .
. . He began to growl.
“Who’s there?” It was the frightened voice of a child―a girl, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“What do you want?” He stuck his head out of the pile.
The girl jumped back with a little shriek. Stupid little mouse.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice shaking.
“It’s my pile. Go away.” “I don’t want your pile. Really, I don’t.” She was shaking so hard, her whole body was quivering. “I―I just need to look in it―to find something.” “In here?” “I think so. I’m not sure.” He was interested in spite of himself.
“What did you lose?” “My―my shoes,” she said. “How could you lose your shoes?” “I guess I sort of hid them.” “You what?” “I know,” she said. He could tell she was about to bawl. “It was stupid. I really need new ones. But Mamma said Anna had to stand up all day on the line and she needed shoes worse than me. I thought if I lost mine . . . It was stupid, I know.” She began to cry in earnest. “Okay, okay, which pile?” He stood up, old bottles, cans, and papers cascading from his shoulders. She put her left foot on top of her right, to keep at least one stockinged foot from touching the frozen ground. “You smell awful,” she said.
“Shut up. You want help or not?” “Please,” she said. “I’m sorry.” They dug about in the dark. At length, Jake found the first shoe, and then the girl found the other. She nodded gratefully, slipped them on her feet, and bent over to tie what was left of the laces.
“You didn’t lose them so good.” “No. I guess I knew all along I’d have to find them.” She gave a little sigh. “But thank you.” She was very polite. He figured she went to school even in shoes that were more holes than leather.“ You can’t sleep in a garbage heap,” she said.
“And why not?” “You’ll freeze to death is why.” Somehow with her shoes found, she didn’t seem like a scared mouse after all.
“I done it before. Besides, where else am I gonna go?” “You might―you can sleep in our kitchen.” She blurted the words out, and then put her hand quickly to her mouth.
“Your folks might notice,” he said.
“Besides I stink. You said so.” “We all stink.” She grabbed his arm.
“Come on before I change my mind.” They went in the alley door of one of the buildings and climbed to the third floor. “Shh,” she said before she opened the door. “They’re all asleep.” She led him between the beds in the first room and then into the kitchen. There was no fire in the stove, but the room was warmer than a trash pile.
“You can lie down here,” she said. “We don’t have an extra bed― not even a quilt. I’m sorry.” “I’ll be okay,” he said. He could hardly make out her features in the dark room, but he could tell that she was smaller than he and very thin, with hair that hung to her shoulders.
“I’ll be up before your pa wakes,” he said.
“He’s dead. Nobody will throw you out.” Still, the first stirring in the back room woke him the next morning. A kid was crying out and a woman’s voice was trying to shush it, though Jake reckoned it to be a hunger cry that could not be hushed with words.
He got silently to his feet. There was a box on the table. He opened it too find a half loaf of bread.
He tore off a chunk, telling himself they’d never miss it. Then he stole back through the front room, where someone was snoring like thunder, and out the door and down the stairs and on down the hill to the mill and to work. No danger of freeziiiiing there. He never stopped moving. Why, even on these frigid winter mornings, he was sweating like a pig by ten o’clock.
Later he remembered that he hadn’t even asked the girl her name or told her his.


Copyright © 2006 by Minna Murra, Inc., Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Company.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618654798
• ISBN 13: 9780618654796
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275