Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan, $16.95, 9780312378868/0312378866, 240 pp., ages 10-14, September 2008)
Setting her novel during the summer of 1903 in Brooklyn, Newbery Medalist Hesse (Out of the Dust) delves into the lives of a Jewish family that fled persecution in Russia even earlier than the characters in her Letters from Rifka (who left in 1919). Fourteen-year-old narrator Joseph Michtom ("rhymes with 'victim'") dreams of one day going to Coney Island, like Dilly Lepkoff, the pickle vendor. That would make Joseph truly "lucky," he thinks. But Joseph has a great deal to be grateful for: His father, who came to Brooklyn 16 years ago, runs a successful candy business ("While Brooklyn slept Papa turned the window of Michtom's Novelty Store into a candy fantasy"). And in February, after Mama saw a cartoon of President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub in Mississippi, she got the idea that they should make stuffed bears with movable limbs--and the Michtoms can't make them fast enough. Hesse explores the subtleties of an immigrant community in which some families have more than others, whether it be money or health, as well as what drives its members apart and what brings them together. One of the novel's most moving scenes involves Joseph's Aunt Golda, whom he lovingly calls "The Queen," and how he and she together define what makes an American. Another depicts the spontaneous kindness the neighborhood boys show Jacob Rostowsky, who was mentally damaged in Russia by the butt of a Cossack's rifle, in a game of pickup baseball. A row with his parents leads Joseph to a trip to Coney Island that changes his outlook on everything, and when Joseph's three-year-old brother, Benjamin, gives his beloved Teddy bear (the very first one his parents ever made) to an orphan girl, Joseph wonders, "What bear had I been carrying . . . And what would it take for me to let it go?" Hesse lays out many surprising discoveries, for Joseph and for the rest of his family. Some people harbor secrets of great bravery, others of great cowardice. But the characters here are deeply human. A subplot about a group of children living under the Brooklyn Bridge is not fully integrated into the plot and can be distracting at times, but it does demonstrate to readers the dire circumstances for many immigrant families, especially children. Ultimately, this is the moving story of the pivotal summer in which Joseph Michtom becomes a man.--Jennifer M. Brown
