The Cats In The Doll Shop
On sale November 10, 2011
Order it now from: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Indiebound or Powell’s
The year is 1915, and the Breittlemann family’s new doll factory is doing well. But an unexpected visit from a Russian cousin and the appearance of a stray cat and her kitten create both new problems and new opportunities for Anna, her sisters, and their parents. This sequel to The Doll Shop Downstairs will be coming out from Viking. Stay tuned for more details.
REVIEW OF The Cats in the Doll Shop:
In this companion book to The Doll Shop Downstairs (2009), Anna learns the joys and challenges of adding a same-age cousin to her family.
Though the sisters—9-year-old Trudie, 11-year-old Anna and new teenager Sophie—are growing up and taking on new challenges, nothing can really prepare them for the arrival of their cousin Tania from Russia. Tania’s mother has been hired as a maid, and the job does not include lodging for Tania, so Anna’s cousin will live with them for about a year, until her mother can save money for her own passage to New York City. The girls are nervous and excited about Tania’s arrival. How will she learn English? Where will she go to school? Will there be enough room? Besides waiting for their cousin, the three girls worry about the mistreated cats next door. Learning to care for the injured kitten Plucky, even when Papa absolutely will not let it live in the house, allows the girls to better understand the silent and sad Tania and eventually is the key that opens her up to her new family. Filled with references to Jewish traditions and the rich history of tenement life in New York City, these fully realized characters could be best friends with the girls from Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family.
A quiet treasure. (Historical fiction. 8-12) –Kirkus Reviews
Read an Excerpt:
It all starts with the letters, Not that letters, all by themselves, are such an odd thing. Papa and Mama run Breittlemann’s Doll Shop, where they make dolls, and they get letters all the time: from Mr. Greenfield, the buyer at the big, fancy toy store uptown called F.A.O. Schwarz, and from buyers at other stores, too. There are letters from suppliers of the different materials they use: velvet and cotton, wool and felt. Sometimes they get letters from people who have bought one of the dolls and want to know if there are any new models available.
But the letters I am talking about are different. They come all the way from Russia, where Mama and Papa were born, and they arrive in fragile envelopes that tear when they are opened. My sisters and I can’t read what is in the letters because they are written in Yiddish, which is the language Mama’s family spoke back in what she calls the “old country.” Sophie, my big sister, can understand Yiddish when she hears it spoken, but even she—a regular smarty-pants, all As and gold stars at school—cannot understand the words—written in Hebrew letters—that are crowded onto the thin, pearl gray sheets of paper.
