Customer Reviews

The Locket: Surviving the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (Historical Fiction Adventures)

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Suzanne Lieurance's THE LOCKET: SURVIVING THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE tells of Galena, who lives in New York and works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory with her sister - until a horrible fire changes her life. The fictionalization of a real historical event and the dramatization of early labor issues involves reader in a fast-paced, gripping story hard to put down.

The Locket Surviving the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is a historical fiction novel written for ages 9 to 12. It tells the story of Galena, an eleven year old Russian-Jewish immigrant who lives in New York City in 1911 with her family and works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory with her older sister Anya. The factory pays low wages, has horrendous working conditions and employs under age children like Galena. In the early 1900's joining the union was a dangerous thing to do but Anya longed to improve working conditions for abused workers. Soon a horrible fire erupts and destroys the Triangle Shirt Factory and shatters a young girls dream.

Author, Suzanne Lieurance weaves the fictional and non-fictional aspects of this historical story with ease. By using dramatic factual accounts of an historical event using realistic fictional characters, Suzanne brings the reader inside the ill-fated factory. Lieurance's account is truly a step back in time to understand how a young Jewish immigrant girl uses the support of her Jewish traditions, family and friends for inspiration to fight for workers rights.

The Locket also has a teacher's guide available for teachers and parents to use. Go to Enslow Publishing www.enslow.com and click on "what's new". Scroll down to Historical Fiction Adventures and click on The Locket. Next click on "Free educator's guide. This guide is a fantastic supplement with additional reading suggestions, discussion questions and other activities.

My daughter, who is 10, read this book and was very upset by the graphic descriptions of the deaths from the fire this book fictionalizes. She has read many books with mature material of a sad or upsetting nature such as the Holocost. But the degree this author goes to describe the gruesome nature of these girls dying is very inappropriate. Many passages dwell at length on horrifying scenes of young girls jumping to their deaths to escape the burning building. Morbid descriptions abound about the mountains of bodies lying about. And when several unidentified bodies are buried, the author includes the following: "I could not understand why there were eight coffins until one of the officials explained that the eigth coffin contains the dismembered fragments picked up at the fire by the police." This is certainly not material I think a ten year old is able to manage. The subject matter certainly, this author's macabre style definately not.