Brooklyn Bridge [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Karen Hesse (Author), Chris Sheban (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: September 2, 2008

Karen Hesse has achieved many honors for her more than twenty books over the course of her award-winning career: the Newbery Medal, the Scott O’Dell Historical Fiction Award, the MacArthur Fellowship “Genius” Award, and the Christopher Medal. Her novels burn with intensity, and keenly felt, deeply researched, and are memorable for their imagination and intelligence.

So it is with great pride and excitement that we present Karen Hesse’s first novel in over five years: Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s the summer of 1903 in Brooklyn and all fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom wants is to experience the thrill, the grandeur, and the electricity of the new amusement park at Coney Island. But that doesn’t seem likely. Ever since his parents—Russian immigrants—invented the stuffed Teddy Bear five months ago, Joseph’s life has turned upside down. No longer do the Michtom’s gather family and friends around the kitchen table to talk. No longer is Joseph at leisure to play stickball with the guys. Now, Joseph works. And complains. And falls in love. And argues with Mama and Papa. And falls out of love. And hopes. Joseph hopes he’ll see Coney Island soon. He hopes that everything will turn right-side up again. He hopes his luck hasn’t run out—because you never know.

            Through all the warmth, the sadness, the frustration, and the laughter of one big, colorful family, Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse builds a stunning story of the lucky, the unlucky, and those in between, and reminds us that our lives—all our lives—are fragile, precious, and connected.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6–9—In 1903, school lets out for summer vacation, and Joseph Michtom dreams of visiting Coney Island. But the 14-year-old's plans have to be placed on hold while he helps out in his father's toy-making business. The family stumbles on an idea that leads to the creation of the first teddy bear and achieves financial success. Set in Brooklyn and narrated by Joseph, the novel portrays the joys and heartaches in the lives of Russian-Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Alternating with this story line is a parallel narrative devoted to abandoned children who forge a life for themselves under the shelter of the Brooklyn Bridge. Readers will have a hard time putting down this compelling story.—Caryl Soriano, New York Public Library
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From Booklist

Rooted in the Jewish immigrant experience in early-twentieth-century New York City, this story weaves together one boy’s immediate personal narrative with a community’s historical struggles. As the first natural-born American in his family, Joe, 14, always hears about the hell his parents escaped from in Russia. But what are the family secrets no one talks about here in America? Why won’t his aunts cross the bridge to his home in Brooklyn? Alternating with Joe’s narrative are chapters that focus on a community of vagrant kids. Joe’s dad has wild success manufacturing America’s first teddy bears, and a fascinating final note fills in historical facts about the toys. It all makes for a much denser story than Hesse’s spare Newbery winner Out of the Dust (1997), but just when things seem too bogged down in cultural detail, suddenly the plot reveals intricate connections, up to the very last chapter, that will make readers return to the beginning of this gripping story and see everything in a new way. Grades 7-12. --Hazel Rochman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Feiwel & Friends (September 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312378866
• ASIN: B0032Z6YVY
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Karen Hesse Does It Again! September 2, 2008

By Bingo-Karen Haney VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

My Review of BROOKLYN BRIDGE by Karen Hesse

Well worth the five year wait, award winning author Karen Hesse's new book, Brooklyn Bridge, is a memorable mix of historical fiction with a trace of enchanting fantasy. Hesse introduces this immigrant tale with a quote by Isaac Newton:" We build too many walls and not enough bridges". This quote could be considered "a spoiler" if one could interpret its relevance prior to reading the story. However, readers must finish the book in order to see what Ms. Hesse means by using this quotation symbolically in relation to the actual Brooklyn Bridge and humanity, especially in the special era she wrote about.

In the early 1900s, the family of fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom has come from Russia to settle in America where the streets are made of gold. His is the typical lively and colorful family who has come to live the immigrant life of 1903 Brooklyn. Joseph who has a pretty good life for a kid in those days, filled with stick ball, a good home, family and lots of friends, is blessed but his dream centers on going to the new and thrilling amusement park known as Coney Island. However, Coney Island must wait. The Michtom family, in Joseph's mind, is doing fine with their candy store when suddenly his Dad gets an idea that instead of making toy bears out of metal or wood, they should be made of cloth. Before you can say `teddy bear', the idea takes off and the family is swamped with the demand for these bears. Joseph's family time is now devoted to this new "invention" and there is no time for Coney Island much less his "regular" boyhood life of friends and frivolity.

Interspersed between the chapters that tell of Joseph and his family and friends comes the haunting story of the kids who live under the bridge.... Karen Hesse writes of these somewhat mystical children in a different, almost poetic way. Theirs is a life of suffering and misery which includes their individual stories of horror, starvation, pain, and even death. The central character under the bridge is one known as the Radiant Boy who glides in like a phantom spirit and frightens the children as they know that when he comes and takes someone with him, the child never comes back. How these children relate to Joseph's story is almost like a parallel universe in that Joseph doesn't seem to even meet any of these kids or acknowledge their existence for the most part. Their connection to Joseph, however, is one that is subtly alluded to throughout the story but it isn't until the end that the reader will see the significance of this story within the main story.

What is the connection between the kids under the bridge and Joseph? As for Coney Island, does Joseph ever get there? As you read this remarkable work by Karen Hesse, the answers to these and many more questions just may satisfyingly and incredibly be revealed. I recommend this as a perfect book for children 11 and older, as well as for adults who want to learn more about a time when our ancestors migrated to this country and settled in that magical place in New York known as Brooklyn. For those of us who know the area, the allure and magnificence of Coney Island and the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge will never cease to exist but rather be enhanced and remembered by reading Karen Hesse's novel, Brooklyn Bridge.

Chris Sheban did the wonderful cover art and adds to this amazing book with his interior illustrations as well.
Submitted by Karen Haney, August, 2008 Read more ›

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a bridge over troubled... well, you know September 11, 2008

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Karen Hesse is back, baby! A person only gets so many golden opportunities in their life, you know. There are only so many times you get a chance to say that someone's back. Someone who may have taken a small vacation from writing for a while. Karen Hesse is a good example of this. She's done some picture books and short stories but her last novel, Aleutian Sparrow came out in 2003. Now she's returned to the field in force and with a full-length no-verse-in-sight middle grade novel on her hands. I mean Hesse was always the queen of verse. Her Out of the Dust won itself a Newbery, and I cherish in a soft place in my heart The Music of Dolphins. I guess you could say it was my favorite Hesse book . . . until now. Brooklyn Bridge takes a fancy to the summer of 1903. A time of bears, Coney Island, hot nights, and sharp delicious pickles.

To hear fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom tell it, everything was fine before the bears. Yeah, his family wasn't rich or anything. His dad ran a candy store and they were like everyone else in their neighborhood. They made do. Then President Roosevelt had to go and NOT shoot a bear and everything went wrong. His Dad got this crazy idea about making stuffed bears out of cloth instead of wood or metal and suddenly everyone and his brother wanted one! Now Joseph's dad never has time to do little things like take his kids to Coney Island, and with all the family drama Joseph's feeling a little shut out. Paired alongside Joseph's thoughts are stories of a group of street kids that live underneath the Brooklyn Bridge at night.... Haunted, both literally and figuratively, by a past tied unknowingly to Joseph's, their story highlights the boy's newfound status.

The book has a large cast of characters, all of them single-minded and interesting. All three of Joseph's aunts act and react off of one another in ways that have become almost rote over the years. Pay close attention to when Hesse chooses to switch between their nicknames ("The Queen", "Aunt Beast", and "Aunt Mouse") and their real names. That's a lesson in narrative power right there. As for other family members, Joseph's younger sister Emily is the wise one in the family, a fact that both she and Joseph recognize without animosity on either end. Really, that was one of the best parts of the book. The sheer levels of affection between different family members. Even when they're fed up or frustrated with one another, you can feel a deep and abiding love there. The family of the Michtoms is also mirrored in the rag tag family of stray kids under the bridge. There's loyalty in both groups, though one seems like a pale knockoff of the other.

As for the writing itself, Hesse using the two narratives (Joseph's vs. the kids under the bridge) to try things out. Joseph's story is straightforward with little poetic asides but nothing overly lyrical. The bridge kids get all the pretty words, maybe to make up for their crummy little lives. A boy who feels affection for a girl simply called The Bride is described as, "close to no one until The Bride came, the white-necked bride, who no longer wore her hair pinned up in the fashion of a lady, but down, in one thick braid, like a farm girl from Nebraska, like the mother he'd never known." Or about a small girl who, for reasons unknown, once drank poison. "She just cried. Silent tears rolling down her cheeks, her eyes two green bruises in a dusky face." Simpler still, just the use of an adjective at the right point makes all the difference in the world when closing out a chapter. "... and the sun rose, evicting the sharp-shouldered children from under the bridge for one more day."

I say that the novel is prose rather than verse, but that isn't to say that Hesse's poetic sensibilities have taken a back seat. No sir! Not she. The novel splits into two separate narratives. On the one hand you have Joseph, his life, and his worries. And on the other hand you have the children that live under the Brooklyn Bridge and their stories. Now, when you compare Joseph's woes (woes = how his parents are too busy to take him to Coney Island) to the woes of the kids under the bridge (woes = drinking acid, sleeping with corpses, stealing, madness, and worse), you'd be naturally inclined to think that Joseph was going to come across as a pretty whiny kid. He thinks HE has problems? Has he ever heard of Mattie, a boy who knew about "eating things no one should eat"? Hesse, however, is exceedingly clever. First of all, for a lot of kids reading this book, they're going to sympathize with Joseph. Having parents so consumed by their professional lives that they fail to spend enough time for their family? Not exactly a non-existent problem today. Fact of the matter, I'd say that most kids that read this book would identify more closely with Joseph than someone like Mattie. But by pairing his frustrations alongside those of the homeless street kids, Hesse is able to keep returning to the notion of being lucky. The very first sentence in this book is, "The guys say I'm lucky." For immigrants coming to America for the first time, you needed luck. The kids under the bridge don't have it and Joseph does, and on some level he's aware of this even if he isn't aware of the specific existence of the kids themselves. At one point in the tale Joseph's little brother gives a small girl his bear. Once he does so he's amazed by the amount of freedom he has. And then Joseph thinks to himself, "What bear had I been carrying . . . And what would it take for me to let it go?" Even the lucky ones amongst us have bears. It's the letting go that's difficult.

Spoiler alert, by the way. I was also amazed that Joseph never ran across the kids under the bridge. There's one moment where he passes Guy on the street, but it's a throwaway moment for him. He barely registers the kid's existence. And yet, his own story, the one that waits until the end of the book to be told, is tied very closely to the story of the bridge kids. This, if anything, was the weak point of the book. The sudden reveal at the end that the ghost under the bridge is Joseph's cousin? It felt like it came out of left field. If Joseph had been feeling guilty about this role in the boy's death, shouldn't that have been alluded to in ways that are less oblique than the ones found here?

It's an older book than Hesse's others. There are references to nasty things done by Cossacks to young girls, and children beaten until they almost die. It's never explicit and never described in any depth, but there's enough to cause me to suggest that maybe this book would be more appropriate for the older set. The 12 and up crowd, perhaps. This is perhaps one of Hesse's most accomplished novels. It's historical fiction that uses the past as a point of reference rather than as the point of the novel. Hesse is weaving together so many seemingly disparate elements and living breathing characters that the end result feels more like a film, a theatrical production, or a scene on a city street than a book for kids. I use the word "beautiful" when describing works of fiction because it's a difficult term to justify. But this book is beautiful. Beautiful and weird and real in a way that will touch you. If five-year absences yield books as fine as this, I urge every writer to take an extended vacation pronto. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars for teens May 17, 2011

By M. Heiss

Format:Hardcover

We have liked other books by Karen Hesse - she writes believable young protagonists and she has very interesting historical settings. This book is no exception - it is well written, with one storyline following a 14-year-old son of Russian immigrants, and another storyline told (just go with it) by the Brooklyn Bridge, telling about the thrown-away children who shelter every night under the bridge.

Well told. Very likable characters.

Themes of blame and forgiveness, family secrets, adolescent crushes, violence against children, resenting your family, and in the end being shaped by your family. Ghosts.

One typo, very last page, on the Coney Island insert: dates should read 1897 to 1964.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Stories Don't Bridge April 23, 2011

By Ohioan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I greatly admire Hesse's writing, but I was disappointed in this book. The characters are sympathetic and the writing is fine, but the story lines of past and present just don't meet up. If the past needed resolving at the end, we should have had hints of that at the beginning and throughout the book. The italicized parts are, as another reviewer said, creepy. They add nothing to the story.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars moving new historical fiction by a master of the genre December 16, 2008

By M. Tanenbaum VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

A moving mix of historical fiction and fantasy from award-winning author Karen Hesse. In the summer of 1903, 14 year old Joseph Michtom really wants to go to Coney Island, but his parents--the inventors of the "Teddy Bear"--are so busy filling orders that there's never any time for fun. The book provides a sensitively done portrayal of the lives of Russian Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century mixed with the story of homeless children who live under a bridge and is filled with lots of colorful characters. The book is told in two styles; an almost mystical style for the stories of the children under the bridge and a first-person narrative in the style of a young boy for Joseph's part of the story.
This novel is an excellent read for boys or girls, especially those who like historical fiction.