Richie Partington's Reviews > All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel
All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel
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24 March 2011 ALL THE WAY TO AMERICA: THE STORY OF A BIG ITALIAN FAMILY AND A LITTLE SHOVEL by Dan Yaccarino, Knopf, March 2011, 40p., ISBN: 978-0-375-86642-5
"And cases filled with hats and clothes,And the belongings of those who journeyed so far,They're strange reminders I suppose,Of where we're from and who we are."-- Marc Cohn, "Ellis Island"
My Sicilian grandfather arrived in America 102 years ago this week, on the ship "Indiana." He would marry my grandmother Rosa who, eight years earlier, had completed a similar journey, from Palermo to Ellis Island, aboard the "Tartar Prince."
Grandpa died long before I was born, but the shoe store he'd founded in Roosevelt, Long Island, below the apartment where he and Rosa raised four children, was still there when I was little. I remember riding in the back of my mother's '52 Buick Roadmaster as we all pulled into the rutted alley behind the shoe store, which had become my Uncle's business after he'd returned from WWII.
By time I was growing up, my grandmother Rosa had a house on a tree-lined street near the shoe store where she grew tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in the backyard. I remember all of us young cousins feasting endlessly under the trees in that yard on sunny Sunday afternoons half a century ago.
Thinking about how my extended family has long since scattered to the four winds, how the aunts and uncles I can still see so clearly -- in my memories of being a child in the Sixties -- are now all passed away, it aches a bit to read Dan Yaccarino's glorious picturebook ALL THE WAY TO AMERICA, a story about family.
"Every year my parents would take my brother, my sister, and me to the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. We watched the parade, listened to Italian folk songs, and ate hot zeppoli. I loved New York City!"
ALL THE WAY TO AMERICA is the true story of Dan's family through the generations. The story begins with his great-grandfather Michele Iaccarino, who "grew up on a farm in Sorrento, Italy" and traveled to America with his parent's few family photographs; his mother's recipe for tomato sauce; and a little shovel his father had given him as a child to help tend the family crops: zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries. As the story progresses, we meet each of the succeeding generations who worked hard, enjoyed life, and prospered. That little shovel that journeyed to America would be passed down from father to son, becoming a thread to connect the six generations of Dan's family whom we meet. The story concludes with Dan's children, Michael and Lucy, using the little shovel to tend the zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries on the family's terrace in New York City.
I cannot imagine any child not longing to hear about his own family history after getting to know Dan's family.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
author, I Second That Emotion: Sharing Children's and Young Adult Poetry
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_...
"And cases filled with hats and clothes,And the belongings of those who journeyed so far,They're strange reminders I suppose,Of where we're from and who we are."-- Marc Cohn, "Ellis Island"
My Sicilian grandfather arrived in America 102 years ago this week, on the ship "Indiana." He would marry my grandmother Rosa who, eight years earlier, had completed a similar journey, from Palermo to Ellis Island, aboard the "Tartar Prince."
Grandpa died long before I was born, but the shoe store he'd founded in Roosevelt, Long Island, below the apartment where he and Rosa raised four children, was still there when I was little. I remember riding in the back of my mother's '52 Buick Roadmaster as we all pulled into the rutted alley behind the shoe store, which had become my Uncle's business after he'd returned from WWII.
By time I was growing up, my grandmother Rosa had a house on a tree-lined street near the shoe store where she grew tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in the backyard. I remember all of us young cousins feasting endlessly under the trees in that yard on sunny Sunday afternoons half a century ago.
Thinking about how my extended family has long since scattered to the four winds, how the aunts and uncles I can still see so clearly -- in my memories of being a child in the Sixties -- are now all passed away, it aches a bit to read Dan Yaccarino's glorious picturebook ALL THE WAY TO AMERICA, a story about family.
"Every year my parents would take my brother, my sister, and me to the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. We watched the parade, listened to Italian folk songs, and ate hot zeppoli. I loved New York City!"
ALL THE WAY TO AMERICA is the true story of Dan's family through the generations. The story begins with his great-grandfather Michele Iaccarino, who "grew up on a farm in Sorrento, Italy" and traveled to America with his parent's few family photographs; his mother's recipe for tomato sauce; and a little shovel his father had given him as a child to help tend the family crops: zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries. As the story progresses, we meet each of the succeeding generations who worked hard, enjoyed life, and prospered. That little shovel that journeyed to America would be passed down from father to son, becoming a thread to connect the six generations of Dan's family whom we meet. The story concludes with Dan's children, Michael and Lucy, using the little shovel to tend the zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries on the family's terrace in New York City.
I cannot imagine any child not longing to hear about his own family history after getting to know Dan's family.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
author, I Second That Emotion: Sharing Children's and Young Adult Poetry
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_...
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