Book Review: Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse

Brooklyn Bridgeis the story of Joseph Michtom, the son of immigrant parents, and one very lucky boy. At least, in everyone else's eyes. His parents "made it big" when they invented the teddy bear. Now the Michtom's have plenty of money, but not plenty of time. Joseph misses the family dinners filled with talking and laughter. He dreams most often of going to Coney Island, but fears it will never happen, because the family is so "lucky" they have too much work. This book mixes episodes of Joseph's life with brief scenes from the lives of truly unlucky children into one complete view of Brooklyn life in the early 1900s.

I'm not sure why, but I had a hard time getting into this story. The episodes almost seemed disjointed and unrelated, none of them necessarily having any connection to the others, even if they were interesting of themselves. The scenes from the lives of the Brooklyn Bridge children were sad and powerful, but did not meld well with the other story (at least at first). I liked the stories of the unlucky children a lot more than Joseph's story, though I think the book became more interesting the farther into it I got. Still very well written and pretty interesting.

RATINGS:
s-factor: none

mrg-factor: none

v-factor: ->
Some mild violence, not described in detail.

Overall rating: ***