Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side [Hardcover]

Raymond Bial (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

Life on the Lower East Side was bustling. Immigrants from many European countries had come to make a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. But the wages they earned were so low that they could afford only the most basic accommodations—tenements. Unfortunately, there were few laws protecting the residents of tenements, and landlords took advantage of this by allowing the buildings to become cramped and squalid. There was little the tenants could do; their only other choice was the street. Though most immigrants struggled in these buildings, many overcame a difficult start and saw generations after them move on to better apartments, homes, and lives. Raymond Bial reveals the first, challenging step in this process as he leads us on a tour of the sights and sounds of the Lower East Side, guiding us through the dark hallways, staircases, and rooms of the tenements.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the title suggests, Bial (The Underground Railroad) focuses this illuminating photoessay on the immigrants who settled on Manhattan's Lower East Side from the early 1800s to the 1930s. Rather than finding the fabled land of opportunity, many lived in poverty in rundown tenement flats plagued by poor ventilation, little light and inadequate sanitation. Through period photos as well as his own color shots (many taken at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum), the author describes and depicts typical cramped apartments. These two-room flats sometimes served as both living quarters (for a dozen or more people, often newly arrived relatives or paying boarders) and family "sweatshops." Bial touches on the sobering particulars: with no running water to allow residents to bathe or launder clothes properly, diseases were rampant, and so many babies died that tenements were known as "infant slaughterhouses." Historic photos, including many famous works by the reformer Jacob Riis, make the plight of these families startlingly real. Bial's conclusion, that most immigrants (or their children or grandchildren) eventually prospered, closes the volume on a positive note. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-8-Spacious layouts, with clearly reproduced black-and-white archival photographs-from Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives and the author's beautifully composed, stunning color pictures, many taken at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum-show a community that has been home to thousands of immigrants past and present. The finely written, spare text, with quotes from such people as reformer Riis and author Sydney Taylor, tells of people crammed into small, dark flats, seeking fresh air on fire escapes and rooftops, lacking adequate sanitation, "protected" by rarely enforced housing regulations, and laboring long hours at home or in factory sweatshops. Bial's detailed descriptions transport readers back into the cramped quarters and crowded streets and alleys of late-19th- and early 20th-century New York, but this could be any city with a large immigrant population. The material complements and expands on that in Russell Freedman's Immigrant Kids (Puffin, 1995). Although the lack of chapters or an index makes the book first and foremost a work to browse, read, and savor, its brevity makes it suitable for a classroom read-aloud or report. The pictures are an added bonus for photography students.
Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; Library Binding edition (August 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618138498
• ISBN-13: 978-0618138494
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #615,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Raymond Bial (pronounced Beal) is the author and photo-illustrator of more than one hundred critically-acclaimed books for children and adults, including Amish Home, Frontier Home, The Underground Railroad, Where Lincoln Walked, One-Room School, Ghost Towns of the American West, Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side, Nauvoo: Mormon City on the Mississippi River, The Super Soybean, and many others. A skilled photographer, he works with ease in both color and in black and white. Working with both film cameras and digital equipment, he is best known for his versatility in portraiture, landscapes, and still lifes, and his sensitivity toward the people, places, and objects portrayed in his images.
The subjects of Raymond's books range from farm life to American social and cultural history. Appealing to young and old alike, his books are ideal choices for parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians to share with children. His most recent photo-essays are Ellis Island: Coming to the Land of Liberty, and Nauvoo: Mormon City on the Mississippi River, published by Houghton-Mifflin, and The Super Soybean, published by Albert Whitman. He has also written three popular collections of mystery fiction for children: The Fresh Grave and Other Ghostly Stories, The Ghost of Honeymoon Creek, and most recently Shadow Island: A Tale of Lake Superior, published by Bluehorse Books. His books have received numerous awards from the American Library Association, National Council of Teachers of English, Children's Book Council, and many other organizations. He lives with his wife, Linda, and children, Sarah and Luke, in Urbana, Illinois. His daughter Anna, who illustrated two of Raymond's books, is a fashion designer in New York City.