Customer Reviews

How to Get Famous in Brooklyn

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I loved this book both for the interesting use of language and observation and for the rich, colorful illustrations. The story really gave me a feeling of living right in the middle of a very cozy Brooklyn. The description of some of the characters was extremely funny and unique.

This wonderful book teaches children to love writing--particularly if they happen to live in the great borough of Brooklyn. Probably it would work even if they don't. It gently suggests the pleasures of observing things, and writing them down.

The little narrator watches a parade of beauty-parlor moms, and all the sights, sounds and smells inside. She moves on to Bibi's old world bakery, and Monday back-in-school day, where the principal's skinny mustache tickles her fancy. She's back outside after school watching the million bikes on her block and then she takes off by subway and bus to visit Ruby in Queens, whose Aunt Betty makes the best brownies in the world. All that and more she writes in her notebook, the pages of which are shown throughout.

Then its pages are swooped up in a rainy storm gust and blown away. Not one goes out to sea, though. They stay "right here where everyone can read them, every night before bed. And that, for your information, is how you get famous in Brooklyn." Taking her encouragement from this book and others, my daughter became a published writer by age 11.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen