Brooklyn Bridge

by Karen Hesse

Book Overview

Karen Hesse has achieved many honors for her more than twenty books over the course of her award-winning career: the Newbery Medal, the Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award, the MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award, and the Christopher Medal. Her novels burn with intensity, and keenly felt, deeply researched, and are memorable for their imagination and intelligence. So it is with great pride and excitement that we present Karen Hesse's first novel...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312378866
• ISBN13: 9780312378868
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club.com

Fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom knows he's one of the lucky ones in New York during the early 1900s. He's the son of a successful Russian immigrant. He's got a warm place to live, enough food so he doesn't go hungry, and family to love him. Although sometimes he doesn't feel so lucky, because his parents no longer spend much time with him now that they are consumed with their new venture--sewing and selling as many of the new "Teddy bears" as they can. Joseph's parents came up with the idea for creating the cuddly animals after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a cornered bear while on a bear hunt. Joseph's family has found new wealth and prestige from their invention, but the boys in the neighborhood treat Joseph differently, as though he's changed from the same old Joe who has always been a friend. Joe spends a lot of time with his sister Emily and their baby brother Benjamin. Joe and Emily dream of going to Coney Island one day, but it doesn't seem as though their parents will ever take enough time off to take them there. Interspersed with Joe's story are vignettes of homeless children living under the Brooklyn Bridge. They leave home for many reasons, either they are abused or orphaned or crippled in some way, but they find shelter and solace with each other. Karen Hesse's novel Brooklyn Bridge is a wonderful portrait of family in its many facets as well as the story of the struggle of immigrants to leave their old lives behind and fit into their new country. It paints a rich picture of Brooklyn in the early 1900s. We get a picture of life in Russia that many of Joseph's friends and family left, and of his aunt who worked tirelessly so that many could leave their homeland and find opportunity in the U.S. There's a strong sense of family obligations, helping out your fellow man, and showing respect to adults. Issues to discuss with mother-daughter book clubs include homelessness, historical events in Russia and the U.S., immigration, sibling relationships and family dynamics. Highly recommended for clubs with girls aged 9 to 12.

Brooklyn Bridge

In a lyrical mixture of early twentieth-century American history and fiction, embellished with a touch of fantasy, Karen Hesse's latest book is the story of an all too real Jewish family rising from immigrant roots. Historically well-researched, Brooklyn Bridge consists of two seemingly unrelated narratives which ultimately build to a satisfying conclusion. The primary story centers on the dynamics of the extended Michtom family and its young protagonist, Joseph. Readers will share the family's experiences with poverty, economic success, and petty grievances intermingled with moments of joy, conflict and death. Joseph's life is turned upside down when his father invents the stuffed teddy bear. While the family is now economically stable, Joseph's time is no longer his own. His yearning to visit the newly opened Coney Island sets the scene for a personal adventure and the emergence of a deep, dark, family secret. The shadow story provides us with a glimpse at the underbelly of society through the lives of a group of street children living under the Brooklyn Bridge. Over their daily struggles hovers a ghost, the Radiant Boy, whose presence foreshadows death. The relationship between the ghost and Joseph shapes the book's explosive ending. Karen Hesse continues to be an innovative, creative and superb master of the written word. Brooklyn Bridge is a wonderfully evocative book that will resonate with young readers facing their own daily problems as they consider Joseph's lament, "What bear had I been carrying ... And what would it take for me to let it go?" Reviewed by Norm Finkelstein

2009 Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Older Readers

Fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom narrates this fascinating, enduring novel inspired by the true story of the family who invented the Teddy Bear. With its colorful descriptions of Jewish immigrant life in Brooklyn in the summer of 1903, Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse weaves the yearnings of the Jewish teen for everything that has been put aside to make room for the booming business of manufacturing Teddy Bears, with the descriptions of his aunts' life on the Lower East Side and a parallel plot about abandoned children living under the Brooklyn Bridge. Joseph longs for his father's attention, the jovial family life he had with his 3 aunts, his sister Emily - a voracious reader who petitions the city for the ability to open a home library in their store - his baby brother Benny, his Uncle Meyer, and the many colorful individuals who people his neighborhood, and the acceptance by the boys in the neighborhood who no longer invite him to play stickball because they think he's too good for them since his family received a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt about the Teddy Bears. But most of all, Joseph longs for the opportunity to get to Coney Island where he thinks he can escape the drudgery brought on by the overnight success of the family bear business. He knows he should consider himself lucky, but he doesn't feel lucky at all. This is an outstanding story with numerous plot lines deftly intertwined and ultimately resolved and tied neatly together in the last chapters with a rather bittersweet, surprising twist. The well defined characters, both major and minor, exhibit a wide range of emotions, through illness, death, marriage, abandonment, jealousy, generosity, kindness, cruelty, joy and sorrow, all with a "Yiddishe Neshame," a Jewish soul. Highly recommended for all - families and individuals, secular and Jewish schools and libraries. REVIEWED BY DEBBIE COLODNY - SEFER SO GOOD, ILLINOIS

Like a bridge over troubled... well, you know

Karen Hesse is back, baby! A person only gets so many golden opportunities in their life, you know. There are only so many times you get a chance to say that someone's back. Someone who may have taken a small vacation from writing for a while. Karen Hesse is a good example of this. She's done some picture books and short stories but her last novel, Aleutian Sparrow came out in 2003. Now she's returned to the field in force and with a full-length no-verse-in-sight middle grade novel on her hands. I mean Hesse was always the queen of verse. Her Out of the Dust won itself a Newbery, and I cherish in a soft place in my heart The Music of Dolphins. I guess you could say it was my favorite Hesse book . . . until now. Brooklyn Bridge takes a fancy to the summer of 1903. A time of bears, Coney Island, hot nights, and sharp delicious pickles. To hear fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom tell it, everything was fine before the bears. Yeah, his family wasn't rich or anything. His dad ran a candy store and they were like everyone else in their neighborhood. They made do. Then President Roosevelt had to go and NOT shoot a bear and everything went wrong. His Dad got this crazy idea about making stuffed bears out of cloth instead of wood or metal and suddenly everyone and his brother wanted one! Now Joseph's dad never has time to do little things like take his kids to Coney Island, and with all the family drama Joseph's feeling a little shut out. Paired alongside Joseph's thoughts are stories of a group of street kids that live underneath the Brooklyn Bridge at night. Haunted, both literally and figuratively, by a past tied unknowingly to Joseph's, their story highlights the boy's newfound status. The book has a large cast of characters, all of them single-minded and interesting. All three of Joseph's aunts act and react off of one another in ways that have become almost rote over the years. Pay close attention to when Hesse chooses to switch between their nicknames ("The Queen", "Aunt Beast", and "Aunt Mouse") and their real names. That's a lesson in narrative power right there. As for other family members, Joseph's younger sister Emily is the wise one in the family, a fact that both she and Joseph recognize without animosity on either end. Really, that was one of the best parts of the book. The sheer levels of affection between different family members. Even when they're fed up or frustrated with one another, you can feel a deep and abiding love there. The family of the Michtoms is also mirrored in the rag tag family of stray kids under the bridge. There's loyalty in both groups, though one seems like a pale knockoff of the other. As for the writing itself, Hesse using the two narratives (Joseph's vs. the kids under the bridge) to try things out. Joseph's story is straightforward with little poetic asides but nothing overly lyrical. The bridge kids get all the pretty words, maybe to make up for their crummy little lives. A boy who feels affection for a girl si

Karen Hesse Does It Again!

My Review of BROOKLYN BRIDGE by Karen Hesse Well worth the five year wait, award winning author Karen Hesse's new book, Brooklyn Bridge, is a memorable mix of historical fiction with a trace of enchanting fantasy. Hesse introduces this immigrant tale with a quote by Isaac Newton:" We build too many walls and not enough bridges". This quote could be considered "a spoiler" if one could interpret its relevance prior to reading the story. However, readers must finish the book in order to see what Ms. Hesse means by using this quotation symbolically in relation to the actual Brooklyn Bridge and humanity, especially in the special era she wrote about. In the early 1900s, the family of fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom has come from Russia to settle in America where the streets are made of gold. His is the typical lively and colorful family who has come to live the immigrant life of 1903 Brooklyn. Joseph who has a pretty good life for a kid in those days, filled with stick ball, a good home, family and lots of friends, is blessed but his dream centers on going to the new and thrilling amusement park known as Coney Island. However, Coney Island must wait. The Michtom family, in Joseph's mind, is doing fine with their candy store when suddenly his Dad gets an idea that instead of making toy bears out of metal or wood, they should be made of cloth. Before you can say `teddy bear', the idea takes off and the family is swamped with the demand for these bears. Joseph's family time is now devoted to this new "invention" and there is no time for Coney Island much less his "regular" boyhood life of friends and frivolity. Interspersed between the chapters that tell of Joseph and his family and friends comes the haunting story of the kids who live under the bridge. Karen Hesse writes of these somewhat mystical children in a different, almost poetic way. Theirs is a life of suffering and misery which includes their individual stories of horror, starvation, pain, and even death. The central character under the bridge is one known as the Radiant Boy who glides in like a phantom spirit and frightens the children as they know that when he comes and takes someone with him, the child never comes back. How these children relate to Joseph's story is almost like a parallel universe in that Joseph doesn't seem to even meet any of these kids or acknowledge their existence for the most part. Their connection to Joseph, however, is one that is subtly alluded to throughout the story but it isn't until the end that the reader will see the significance of this story within the main story. What is the connection between the kids under the bridge and Joseph? As for Coney Island, does Joseph ever get there? As you read this remarkable work by Karen Hesse, the answers to these and many more questions just may satisfyingly and incredibly be revealed. I recommend this as a perfect book for children 11 and older, as well as for adults who want to learn more about a time when our