Annie Quinn in America [Hardcover]

Mical Schneider (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Series: Adventures in Time

To escape the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, twelve-year-old Annie and her brother emigrate to New York City where they join their older sister as servants, earning money to bring the rest of their family to America, where they discover that both food and hardships abound.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-Whether in Ireland, aboard ship, or in New York, Annie's life is hard. In the 1840s, the poverty at home is extreme, so the 12-year-old and her younger brother Thomas are sent to their sister Bridget in America, leaving their mother and other siblings behind but taking their deceased father's valuable fiddle with them. As they land in New York, a thief makes off with her possessions. Bridget, who is employed by a wealthy family, puts Annie to work for the joyless housemaid; Thomas is assigned to the abusive coachman. All too soon, however, this less-than-idyllic existence is cut short as first Thomas runs away and then Annie is pushed out, on the cook's trumped-up charge of stealing. Rescued by an African-American family who runs a boarding house and takes in laundry, the youngster is befriended by their daughter and remains determined to find her brother and the violin. Annie is a sympathetic heroine, and the cook and coachman are villainous enough to sustain some reader interest, but opportunistic plot turns and small details left dangling detract from the suspense, and the "all's well" ending is predictable. Patricia Reilly Giff's Nory Ryan's Song (Delacorte, 2000) far surpasses this treatment of Ireland's potato famine, and Avi's swashbuckling Beyond the Western Sea (Orchard, 1996) is a fuller description of the plight of the newly arrived Irish immigrant. A missed opportunity in many ways.

Carol A. Edwards, Sonoma County Library, Santa Rosa, CA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-9. There's no debate when Annie and her brother get a chance to leave famine-ravaged Ireland in 1847 to live with their sister Bridget in New York. The youngsters brave the perilous journey and arrive at the bustling city ready to start anew. Bridget finds a place for them on the domestic staff of the Fairchild household, where she works as a maid, and the siblings look forward to the day when they can bring over the rest of the family. Then reality intervenes: a conniving thief who stole the children's baggage at dockside returns to menace them, and the household staff takes advantage of the younger Quinns, unbeknownst to both Bridget and the Fairchilds. Despite the difficulties, all ends well: plucky Annie triumphs. This well-done historical novel, rich in details about the potato famine and Irish life in mid-nineteenth-century New York, will grab readers with its action-packed plot and strong characterizations. Anne O'Malley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Carolrhoda Books (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1575055104
• ISBN-13: 978-1575055107
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,540,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars music soothes your heart when your family falls apart, October 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Annie Quinn in America (Hardcover)

Annie Quinn's story is set in the days of the Irish potato famine. Food is not the only thing in short supply: justice, education, decent housing and staying together as a family are missing from Annie's life. However, she can play the fiddle, which she learned from her dead father, and when she goes off to America, without her mother and younger brothers, she takes her father's fiddle with her.

The city of New York in which she arrives is different but not necessarily better than the Irish countryside she has left behind. In New York, she learns to get along with people who are not Irish and accept their help as human beings. This is Annie's salvation. She survives and thrives even though her family will be never be as happy as it was before.

The reason I think this book is so special is that Annie loves music so much. Sometimes the story is unendurably sad but when Annie plays, her troubles dissolve. When she loses the violin, she still thinks about the happy days when she played with her family and friends. When she gets a new violin in the end, it is a great moment for the reader as well as for Annie.

I would recommend this book for any girl who loves music as well as an Irish girl.