Bowery Girl [Hardcover]

Kim Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2006

The Bowery, 1883: Gamblers and thieves, immigrants and Street Arabs, Do-Gooders and charity houses, impossible dreams and impossible odds. This is the story of two "Bowery girls"—the pickpocket Mollie Flynn and the prostitute Annabelle Lee, young women without family or education who must fend for themselves.Two young women whose survival depends on each other. After a chance encounter with Emmeline DuPre, a "Do-Gooder" who has recently opened a settlement house, Mollie and Annabelle are given the opportunity to better themselves. But the city offers many temptations, and on the streets of the Bowery, you do whatever it takes to survive.

This vibrant, carefully researched novel shows how much—and how little—our world has changed.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–Pickpocket Mollie Flynn and prostitute Annabelle Lee are struggling to survive in New York City in the late 1880s, where they witness the unforgiving sights and smells of the tenements. The story opens as Annabelle is released from jail, and Mollie finds out that her friend is pregnant. The babys father is only interested in how much money Annabelle can earn for him. When the girls meet Miss DuPre, who runs a settlement house, she gives them a chance to be educated and learn a trade. Their lives slowly change but when the well-intentioned woman informs Annabelle that there is a family interested in adopting her baby, the two friends vehemently reject the idea and return to the streets. The harsh language and dialect are contextually appropriate, and the young womens desire for a better life but inability to achieve it comes through clearly. The story explores the lack of opportunities available to women in the 19th century while describing the start of social programs to teach skills that would enable disadvantaged individuals to provide for themselves and their families.–Kelly Czarnecki, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg, NC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 8-11. Gang violence, raucous carousing, sex, accidental pregnancy, and crime--not what most teens will expect from Victorian-era historical fiction. But that's exactly what they'll find in this tightly plotted novel about the bond between a pickpocket and prostitute in the notorious Bowery District of late-nineteenth-century Manhattan, the same area immortalized in Herbert Asbury's 1927 Gangs of New York (perhaps better known to teens from the 2002 movie). Sixteen-year-old foundling Mollie Flynn dreams of starting fresh across the just-built Brooklyn Bridge, and she counts on her own stealing, and her roommate Annabelle's whoring, to finance their move. But when Annabelle gets pregnant and begins attending self-improvement classes at a settlement house, Mollie reluctantly joins her, yet both remain unable to extricate themselves completely from their gritty past lives. Though a melodramatic conclusion hammers too intently on themes of redemption, elsewhere Taylor allows her characters to behave mostly unhampered by an agenda; indeed, readers are likely to feel more in common with these streetwise girls than the incongruously romantic, soft-focus cover image may suggest. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile (April 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670059668
• ISBN-13: 978-0670059669
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,249,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kim Taylor was born in Denver, Colorado. She spent most of her childhood and adult life living on California's Monterey Peninsula (with short stretches in Los Angeles, CA and Boulder, CO). She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

She holds a bachelor's degree in Drama from University of California, Irvine, and a masters degree in Special Education, Option: Orientation and Mobility for the Blind from California State University, Los Angeles. She taught blind and visually impaired adults for seven years, and now teaches at Heald College, Portland. While in Los Angeles, she co-founded and acted in an award-winning theatre company. She facilitates workshops through PDXWriters on the Craft of Fiction.

She has recently completed a mainstream novel, THE BAY. She is the author of the YA novels CISSY FUNK and BOWERY GIRL. Cissy Funk (HarperCollins) was honored with a 2002 Willa Cather Award for Best Young Adult Novel. Bowery Girl (Viking) was listed as a Best Reads for Teens by the New York Public Library.

Visit her website at www.krtaylor.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bowery Girl Loved It, March 2, 2010

By 

Virginia A. Ford "VF Fun Loving Grandma" (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bowery Girl (Hardcover)

I loved this book. It really reminded me of the times when my mom must have grown up. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty Realism, August 24, 2011

By 

Sadie (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bowery Girl (Hardcover)

It's the 1880s, and the Brooklyn Bridge is just being completed. Annabelle and Mollie are teenagers and already hardened by life in the Fourth Ward, or the Bowery, on the Island of Manhattan. The Fourth Ward are the slums where people are crammed into small, windowless apartments with no running water. Annabelle is a prostitute who's in love with her pimp. Mollie is a pick pocket. They both want to move to Brooklyn, where they've heard they can have a better life. They want to make an honest living and have an apartment with a window to the outside. The thing that might help them get their wish is also the thing that might hold them back. A wealthy woman, Emmeline Dupre, has purchased the East Side Bath house, where they used to pay five cents to bathe in filthy water. She's converted it into a school to teach the uneducated how to read and learn how to use the new fangled typewriter so they can get a job. Mollie is jealous of Annabelle's involvement with the new establishment and wanting to better herself. However, she soon finds Emmeline captivating and decides to take typing classes. There's a secret surrounding Emmeline, like who she is and why she wants to help the poorest of the poor.

This is a realistic picture of what life was like in the Bowery. Not for the faint of heart. I have to admit the cover photo is what first attracted me to the novel. It turns out that photos of the period, place and people are what attracted the author to write about it. It's not a happy, little slice of life story. Like life amongst the poor, bad things happened with very little great things to look forward to.

I was most intrigued with the character of Emmeline and continued to wonder about her long after I finished the book. I think there's a second book in her story, which was never completely revealed.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, April 19, 2006

By 

Serenity "Seren" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bowery Girl (Hardcover)

Though the book slightly drags in very few parts, It has a great plot and the characters are ones you can relate to if your a teen or just a little older. Kim Taylor really out did her self with this book.