Helpful Score: 4
This book is set in the Depression and tells of a family through very hard times. It is heartbreaking in parts yet always hopeful that the love of family will win out. Excellent characters that grab your heartstrings from the first page.I highly recommend it.
Helpful Score: 3
The author really makes you feel for this family and for the father who is struggling to hold his family together. The story is told by the young boy who is trying to cope with all they are going through and deal with his mother's abandonment. Definitely worth a read.
Helpful Score: 2
A story set in the great depression-one family's hardships and toll it takes on them all, especially the children.
Helpful Score: 1
This book was incredibly tragic. It kept me reading for sure but only in the hope that life would get better for the brother and sister in the story. Very realistic.
Very good story, sad but at least there is hope in the end
Mary McGarry Morris is a wonderful story teller. This is a story of a family, (told by the older brother) that live in Vermont during the Great Depression. The father is a farm animal butcher and the mother unexpectedly moves. The story traces the children's journey to find their lost mother.
Sweet, sweet story!
This was one of the most difficult books I've read about life during the Depression, family ties and abandonment. It broke my heart.
One of the best books I've read on broken families. Tender and heartbreaking but well worthwhile.
From the first page you won't be able to put this book down. The family in this book will creep into your heart and you will actually think you know them. You want to help them and you will care what happens to them. The father you will respect and the children that want their mom so badly. The mom who you would just like to slap silly for leaving her children and the friends and not so friendly neighbors make up for a lovely lovely story i could read again and again.
What an emotionally wrenching novel this was. A poignant tale about two children, a brother and his little sister during the depression of the 30's and how difficult life was, especially since their mother abandoned them. Written with such sensitivity and clarity of place and character, that it moves seamlessly through very dark material.
An enjoyable read, a poignant story
Ejoyed this book about 2 children during the depression.
The story of a family abandoned by the mother in rural Vermont during the Great Depression. Full of heartache, but I couldn't put it down. An easy read, too.
Heartwarming.
This book is about 2 children that their mother has abandoned. It is a story of the difficulty the children and the father experience. It was very moving, especially the part where the children are exploited by another mother with her own agenda. Very good reading!
Very good, but rather sad.
Well written book about children and their struggle to be loved.
Author's characterization of children was spot on at each age. Follow the children as they grow up during the depression, as various situations develop told through the older brother's point of view. Safety nets fail and the boy takes their lives into his own hands.
Very touching and sweet.
I'm going to throw in my two cents just because I'm so irritated with all the reviews that call this book "bad" because it is sad. They are not the same thing. If you don't like sad books, try to avoid them. But if sad books were automatically "bad," then that would make most of the world's great literature "bad." Literature is about the human condition, which is not always rainbows and lollipops.
Now, to this book: it is not great literature. Not because it's sad, but because it's so implausible. This is the story of a family hit hard by the Great Depression. Mom walks out on Dad; Dad loses the house; family lives in a tent until winter, when the children are taken in and kicked out by various family members. Finally, the wealthy family behind all of Dad's troubles wants to adopt the adorable little sister -- but that goes south too.
SPOILER ALERT: Finally, the children run off to find their mother -- who hands them off first to an orphanage, then to the hideous wealthy family. And who comes running in at the last possible second to save the day? Dad!!! THAT's the not-so-great part about this novel.
END OF SPOILER.
So, if you would like a watered-down version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with a lot less historical color, feel free to read this highly sentimental novel. But please don't call it bad just because most of it is "sad."
Now, to this book: it is not great literature. Not because it's sad, but because it's so implausible. This is the story of a family hit hard by the Great Depression. Mom walks out on Dad; Dad loses the house; family lives in a tent until winter, when the children are taken in and kicked out by various family members. Finally, the wealthy family behind all of Dad's troubles wants to adopt the adorable little sister -- but that goes south too.
SPOILER ALERT: Finally, the children run off to find their mother -- who hands them off first to an orphanage, then to the hideous wealthy family. And who comes running in at the last possible second to save the day? Dad!!! THAT's the not-so-great part about this novel.
END OF SPOILER.
So, if you would like a watered-down version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with a lot less historical color, feel free to read this highly sentimental novel. But please don't call it bad just because most of it is "sad."
