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Summary
Summary
A flying goat, buttons the size of sleds, and a castle on Hester Street are some of the widely imaginative stories Julie's grandpa tells her about his journey from Russia to New York many years ago. But Grandma's no-nonsense memories are far different from Grandpa's tall tales.
This classic story, which reveals the immigrant experience with wit and warmth, won the Sydney Taylor Book Award when it was originally published with Linda Heller's own illustrations. Now, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, The Castle on Hester Street is given new life with Boris Kulikov's vibrant paintings.
Author Notes
Linda Heller has written and illustrated many books for children. The Castle on Hester Street won the Sydney Taylor Book Award when it was first published in 1982. Linda Heller lives in New York City.
Boris Kulikov, a former set and costume designer in St. Petersburg, Russia, was chosen as a Flying Start by Publishers Weekly. He has also illustrated Morris the Artist by Lore Segal, The Perfect Friend by Yelena Romanova, and Carnival of Animals by John Lithgow. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Originally illustrated by the author, this 1982 Sydney Taylor Book Award winner receives spectacular new life by Kulikov (Carnival of the Animals). Like the story, Kulikov's illustrations are beguiling, witty and filled with enough details for dozens of readings. Julie's grandparents tell her about coming to America and falling in love, their versions competing in narrative counterpoint-her grandmother Rose gives her the facts ("Grandpa came on a boat, like I did. It was terrible") and her grandfather Sol exaggerates ("But what a welcome I got when I arrived. President Theodore Roosevelt rode his horse through a blizzard of ticker tape to greet me. `Hello, Sol,' he said. `Mighty glad you could come' "). The book riffs on the difference between the stories the two grandparents tell while at the same time showing how much Julie loves both grandparents and both types of "true." Kulikov never fails to amuse, whether he's rendering a faded sepia photograph of Sol's pushcart or the buttons Sol imagines he sold-"buttons carved from diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.... Buttons you could use as sleds in the snow." His painting of Rose being watched by her five brothers (so "nobody [could steal] her away") is especially irresistible, as is his homage to Chagall as the two young lovers float in the air behind their babies who ride down Hester Street in "hand-carved golden baby carriages." Not to be missed. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Visiting her grandparents, Julie hears two very different stories about how they came to America. Grandfather's stories are exuberant tall tales, while Grandmother tries to rein him in; Kulikov's new illustrations do a marvelous job illustrating the contrast. Throughout, the love Julie and her grandparents have is palpable, and Heller makes it clear that truth can come in many guises. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Kulikov adds wry, wild, tender illustrations to a story about Jewish immigration, originally published 25 years ago. An elemental blend of magical dreams and harsh reality, the story focuses on a young girl, Julie, whose grandfather explains how he came from a Russian village to New York long ago. He tells her he remembers flying over the ocean in a gold wagon pulled by a goat. Julie's grandmother corrects him, reminding him of the persecution that drove the Jews to leave, the journey in a crowded ship, and harsh inspections on Ellis Island. While Grandpa's stories get even more bizarre and hilarious ( everyone was given a castle ), Grandma tells the facts: he peddled buttons, and she spent long hours in a factory. The warm pictures combine the glowing tall-tale scenarios with realistic views of tenements and sweatshops to give listeners a sense of history without frightening them. Adult readers will want to talk to kids about immigration then and now.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NEW YORK CITY has long held pride of place as an inspiration for American picture books. It's not just that so many writers, illustrators and publishers live and work in New York. The city occupies a special niche in the nation's imaginative landscape as an unparalleled concentration of biggests, boldests and bests; as a world crossroads; as a place where dreams come true. The very first such illustrated book for young readers, Samuel Wood's "New-York Cries" (1808), wrapped a slim collection of peddlers' traditional rhymes and chants in a thinly veiled warning: study hard and live right or risk ending up selling apples on the street, or worse. Later books replaced ham-fisted lesson-mongering with a kinder, gentler attitude informed by modern psychology and progressive education. Hardie Gramatky's "Little Toot" (1939) - an edition has just appeared to mark the artist's birth centenary - conveyed the message that wee tugboats (and by analogy small children) have a role to play in the daunting world of great ships and grown-ups. Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight's "Eloise" (1955) reimagined the Plaza as a precocious 6-year-old's personal playground. "The House on East 88th Street," "In the Night Kitchen," "The Snowy Day," "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers": the list goes on, the genre having, if anything, gained new momentum in the emotional aftermath of 9/11. One happy consequence of all this interest is the reintroduction of "The Castle on Hester Street," Linda Heller's zestful tale of Russian-Jewish immigration at the turn of the last century, in a 25th-anniversary edition with robust new illustrations by the Russian émigré artist Boris Kulikov. Loving grandparents, Rose and Sol, vie for young Julie's attention as they give wildly contrasting accounts of their Old World departures and New York arrivals. Sol, the dreamer, speaks of dockside greetings from President Teddy Roosevelt and of living like a king on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Rose, the realist, recalls cramped quarters and long hours of piecework. Both versions of the past, Heller suggests, contain a kernel of truth. Together, they make a palpable family legacy: one part bitter, one part sweet, all worth remembering. For decades, the Lower East Side served as the city's principal melting pot. But New York has always been dotted with outposts where subcultures jostle and mix. Ted Lewin takes readers inside one of them in his new book, "At Gleason's Gym," about the storied training ground for fighters like Muhammad Ali and Jake La Motta. Thai kickboxers and a Russian girl are among the regulars who receive passing nods in a narrative that opens with Sugar Boy Younan, a real 9-year-old, as a fighter to watch. Lewin, who comes from a family of professional wrestlers, has the chops as a watercolorist and draftsman to convey the fever-pitch action in Gleason's, which occupies a sprawling loft near the Brooklyn Bridge. Boxing prowess may not be everyone's dream. But who would dispute Sugar Boy's father's larger goal for his son: "a good brain in a good body"? New York's occasionally mean streets suddenly seemed less so when in the early 1990s possibly the first-ever red-tailed hawks breezed into town, nesting and mating in the upper reaches of a Fifth Avenue high-rise. Marie Winn, a journalist, gave a memorable account of the tale for adult readers in "Red-Tails in Love (1998). It was only a matter of time before the story made its way into books for young readers. This spring brought Jeanette Winter's "Tale of Pale Male," and now there is Meghan McCarthy's "City Hawk." McCarthy gets off to a shaky start with a stage-setting reference to Central Park as the "city's largest park" (Pelham Bay Park is three times the size), then struggles to find a story line in all the fascinating facts, a great many of which have ended up in a note at the back of the book. Her very appealing, broad-brush illustrations have better focus, ranging effortlessly from goofy to grand, registering many a curious detail of architectural ornamentation and casual-chic park wear. Not to mention those natty lovebirds' bedroom eyes! Back to Brooklyn: a couple of years ago, Mo Willems gave an uproarious account of a tantrum thrown in the streets of Park Slope by a vibrant preverbal child who had just lost her inseparable friend, a stuffed toy rabbit named Knuffle Bunny. In "Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity," a slightly older Trixie returns as an engaging chatterbox, only to suffer another rude awakening when a classmate comes to preschool clutching a bunny identical to her own "one of a kind" companion. Bad tempers are the predictable result of the egocentrism-smashing revelation, and more fireworks ensue with the accidental switching of the two rabbits by the teacher, and the traumatic discovery of the mix-up at 2:30 a.m. Willems has a brilliant knack for exposing early childhood's developmental pivot points, and for lampooning the best efforts of today's hip but hapless parents to do the right thing. In the artist's computer-manipulated graphics, manically wired and warmhearted cartoon characters rendered in color play out their workaday dramas against a backdrop of black-and-white photographs of neighborhood streets and interiors. Beyond the novelty of the special effect lies the stirring truth that the city that never sleeps is a self-regenerating, nonstop theater of becoming, a place where on any given day, amid huge skyscrapers and venerable brownstone blocks, two new friends may decide to draw their own favorite bunnies on the nearest sidewalk for all the world to see. Leonard S. Marcus's "Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever and Became an American Icon Along the Way" will be published this month.
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-While visiting her grandparents, young Julie is treated to Grandpa's tall tales of his youth, with many interruptions and corrections from Grandma. He tells of his magical immigration from Russia to America, zooming across the ocean in a solid-gold wagon pulled by a goat, and the tall castle that he lived in when he arrived. Refusing to stand for such nonsense, his wife explains the hardships of Ellis Island and the small, dismal room he shared with two other men. Grandpa describes the buttons-carved from gemstones and as big as sleds-that he sold from his pushcart, while Grandma clarifies that they were just regular buttons. Both agree, however, that their new life of freedom in America made everything worthwhile. This unusually playful approach to the history of Jewish immigration is highly appealing. Kulikov's artwork, too, is playful, with bright colors, whimsical perspectives, and effective use of light. The original edition (Jewish Pubn. Society, 1982), sweetly illustrated by the author in a more limited palette, focused on the relationship between the child and her grandparents; this new, more energetic version pictures Julie only as a framing device and places the emphasis on the couple's experiences. Both approaches convey the importance of family history. This entertaining story may prompt readers to ask their own grandparents for tales about the past.-Heidi Estrin, Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
New pictures add fresh animation to a slightly retouched text originally published in 1982. Young Julie listens happily as Grandfather describes how he crossed the ocean in a golden wagon pulled by Moishe, a very special goat; how Teddy Roosevelt personally welcomed him; and how he emerged from his huge castle on New York City's Lower East Side to sell gemstone and plate-sized buttons. Meanwhile, Grandmother counters with more likely accounts of an overcrowded immigrant ship, Ellis Island and hard times on Hester Street. The two find common ground at last, in telling how they met and had Julie's mother and other children: "We had each other and we were free to live as we wanted." Properly chastened, Grandfather promises to tell only the truth from now on--such as the tale of how he and Moishe once sang for Woodrow Wilson. The historical references make the narrative a bit creaky, but Kulikov recreates warmly lit, authentic-looking interiors and street scenes, and his smiling, flexibly posed figures project an intimacy that will draw children in to this intergenerational interchange. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
