Publication Date: September 3, 2009 | Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up
Nine-year-old Anna and her sisters love to play with the dolls in their parents' doll repair shop. But when World War I begins, an embargo on German-made goods-including the parts Papa needs to repair the dolls-threatens to put the family's shop out of business. Fortunately, Anna has an idea that just might save the day. Inspired by the true story of Madame Alexander, this is a timeless tale of family and imagination.
This beautiful gift edition of The Doll Shop Downstairs, featuring an eye-catching foil embossed cover, will make a perfect holiday present for dreamers and doll lovers everywhere.
Grade 2–4—Anna's father repairs dolls for a living with parts he special orders from Germany. Their family lives above the shop and the nine-year-old and her sisters help with chores. In their spare time, they make up games to play with the dolls waiting to be repaired. Of course, each girl has a favorite. When war breaks out (an author's note says it is World War I and describes the embargo), Anna's father can no longer get his parts and the shop begins to suffer. He starts returning the dolls he can't repair, and soon there are only six left. Then Anna comes up with the idea to create new ones, and her Nurse Nora is a success. With business looking better, the only thing the girls have left to worry about is whether or not the owners of their favorite broken dolls will return to claim them. This slow but sweet tale has an old-fashioned feel and is based on a true story. Readers who stick with it will be happy with the ending.—Kelly Roth, Bartow County Public Library, Cartersville, GA END
Review
-Mix one part Rumer Godden+s The Story of Holly and Ivy and many parts Sydney Taylor+s All-of-a-Kind Family and you create a standout family-and-doll story.+-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
When I was young, I didn't think about becoming a writer. In fact, I was determined to become a ballerina, because I studied ballet for many years, and by the time I was in high school, I was taking seven ballet classes a week. But I was always a big reader. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and I used to frequent all the different libraries in my neighborhood on a regular basis. I would look for books by authors I loved. I read my favorite books--ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, A LITTLE PRINCESS, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN--over and over again. I probably read each of those books twenty times in all. I read lots of other things too: I loved comic books and magazines, like Mad and Seventeen. But when you are reader, you just need to read. Sometimes you read books that change your life, like OF MICE AND MEN, which I read--and adored-- when I was in sixth grade. Other times, you read the latest adventures of Betty and Veronica. You'll read a three-day old newspaper days or the back of the cereal box if that's all that there is available, because readers just need to read. So I kept reading, and I kept dancing too, though by the time I was a senior in high school, it was pretty clear to me that I was neither talented nor driven enough to become a professional ballet dancer and I stopped taking lessons and went off to college instead.
As a student at Vassar College, I never once took a writing course. I was not accepted into the poetry workshop I applied to, so I avoided all other writing classes, and instead focused on literature, language and art history, which was my declared major. I was so taken with the field that I decided to pursue my studies on a graduate level. I enrolled in a PhD program at Columbia University where I have to confess that I was miserable. I didn't like the teachers, the students or the classes. I found graduate school the antithesis of undergraduate education; while the latter encouraged experimentation, growth, expansion, the former seemed to demand a kind of narrowing of focus and a rigidity that was simply at odds with my soul. It was like business school without the reward of a well-paying job at the end. Everyone carried a briefcase. I too bought a briefcase, but since I mostly used it to tote my lunch and the NYT crossword puzzle, it didn't do much for my success as a grad student. But I have to thank the program at Columbia for being so very inhospitable, because it helped nudge me out of academia, where I so patently did not belong, and into a different kind of life. I was allowed to take classes in other departments, and by now I was recovered from my earlier rejection so I decided to take a fiction writing class--also, the class was open to anyone; I didn't have to submit work to be accepted. This class was my aha! moment. The light bulb went off for me when I took that class. Suddenly, I understood what I wanted to do with my life. Now I just had to find a way to make a living while I did it.
I finished out the year at Columbia, got a job in which I had no interest whatsoever, and began to look for any kind of freelance writing that I could find. In the beginning, I wrote for very little money or even for free: I wrote for neighborhood newspapers, the alumni magazine of my college. I wrote brochures, book reviews, newsletters--anything and everything that anyone would ask me to write. I did this for a long time and eventually, it worked. I was able to be a little choosier about what I wrote, and for whom I wrote it. And I was able to use my clips to persuade editors to actually assign me articles and stories, instead of my having to write them and hope I could get then published.
But all the while I was writing articles and essays, I was also writing the kind of fiction--short stories, a novel--that had interested me when I was still a student at Columbia. And eventually I began to publish this work too. I've written two novels for adults, THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS and IN DAHLIA'S WAKE--and my third novel, BREAKING THE BANK, will be out in September. I presently live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband and our two children and two small, yappy dogs. I have been setting my recent novels in my own backyard so to speak; Brooklyn has been fertile ground in all sorts of ways.
This review is from: The Doll Shop Downstairs (Hardcover)
The Breittlemann family operated a successful doll-repair business on the Lower East Side of New York City. Because store-bought dolls were made of fragile materials such as china and porcelain during the early 1900s, they broke easily, and the Breittlemann shop had established a good reputation for its high-quality work. Anna and her sisters enjoyed helping out in any way they could, especially when it meant they could play with the dolls undergoing repairs. After all, these were expensive dolls that their parents could ill afford to purchase themselves.
The start of World War I brought an enormous interruption to their business, since almost all the doll parts they used were imported from Germany and the United States placed an embargo on trade with Germany. When Mama started taking in sewing jobs in order to generate badly needed cash, Anna became determined to get a job and help her family. Along the way the Breittlemanns learned that taking a chance with an interesting idea could lead to some surprising outcomes.
This tender story, with its plot based on actual events, is loaded with substance. Economic themes, especially the impact of war-time scarcities on production and consumption, are delicately woven into a tale of Jewish culture, social class, and children's play. The book's subtle blend of these rich themes works well to broaden the appeal to more than just doll lovers.
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This review is from: The Doll Shop Downstairs (Hardcover)
With a nod to the best children's books about dolls, and another to Sydney Taylor's
All of a Kind Family, author Yona Zeldis Mcdonough gives us wholly original story about three doll loving Jewish sisters in New York City's Lower East Side. Mama and Papa run Breittlemann's Doll Repair Shop, whose sign states, "All Kinds of Dolls Lovingly Restored and Mended, Est. 1904". The story is told by middle sister, Anna, stuck between smart and grown up Sophie, age 11, and cute baby Trudy, who tries whining and crying to get her way. In a mere 107 magical pages, we are transported to the Breittleman's home and business, just before the outbreak of World War I. Dolls and doll parts, a resourceful Mama and Papa, and an appealing heroine and her sisters, are deftly drawn. Arguments among the siblings, hurt feelings, and lack of money are some of the problems that beset the family. When World War I breaks out, and an embargo is placed on importing German goods, economic problems loom; the doll repair business is in trouble. With resourcefulness, Anna surprises herself and her family by coming up with a possible solution. More than dolls are mended in this story. Anna, with the help of her encouraging mama, her pocket notebook diary and the comfort she finds in writing, mends her own heart, and finds her place in the family. Sketchy line drawings by Heather Maione convey the old fashioned ambience of the doll shop, and the active sisters in pinafores. Reading level, typeface, spacing and book length are perfect for young readers. This reviewer predicts that The Doll Shop Downstairs will become a classic. Jewish observance and values are a positive and matter of fact part of this very American story. For readers from 8-12 and as a read aloud for classrooms and families. Naomi Morse
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This review is from: The Doll Shop Downstairs (Hardcover)
THE DOLL SHOP DOWNSTAIRS receives fine black and white drawings throughout by Heather Maione as it tells of a doll shop and an awkward middle child who feels special only when she's in her family's doll repair shop with her favorite doll - a repair doll that isn't hers. When war threatens the shop, Anna dreams of saving it - and her doll. Girls will find this a tender, winning tale.
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