Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York by Deborah Hopkinson (2BK)

Hopkinson, Deborah. (2003). Shutting Out The Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York
1880-1924. New York: Orchard Books

Grade Level:
I would recommend this book for students 4th –7th grades.

Author Credibility:
Hopkinson tells the reader were she researched her information in several different sections. These sections include: Acknowledgments, Selected Bibliography, Text Permissions, Notes, and Photo Credits. She goes chapter by chapter and tells the reader where her information and quotes came from in the Notes section of the book. This book won such awards as
Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People
Orbis Pictus Honor
Jane Addams Children’s Peace Award Honor.

Summary:
This book looks at the life of the immigrant children: Rose Gollup Cohen, Leonard Covello, Maurice Hindus, Pauline Newman, and Marcus Eli Ravage. The book skips back in forth between their lives and their experiences. It starts by telling of their lives before they came to America. It discusses what they think America will be like. Hopkinson discusses how many families had to split apart for awhile in order to save enough money to make it to the United States. Coming to America was a big deal and often whole communities turned out to wish people going to a America best wishes. Hopkinson mentions the long journey to the United States, and finally their arrivial to the United States. As the children arrive to the United States they get their first experience in the tenements. America was so different from the countries they came from some did not venture past their front steps for the first few days. Hopkinson gives the reader a vivid description of tenements and the conditions immigrants lived in. Many families took in boarders as an extra income. The rooms were crowded and rarely repaired.
Hopkinson also discusses greenhorns and what the immigrants would do to fit in in the United States, sometimes even changing their names. In order for a family to survive they needed income from everyone in their family. Everyone worked, often young children would help by making silk flowers for hats. The book tells of each of the children’s first jobs, and how hard they worked.
Slowly changes started to happen to regulate the child industry. Children were required to go to school for a while, but many dropped out before high school in order to work. This book also tells about the games children liked to play, the things they enjoyed, and life on the streets.
The story ends with a description of each child and what they did in their life. This was my favorite part. It showed how hard work and determination pays off. I loved reading to see were the children ended up.

Standards: Social Studies
*Culture
*Time, Continuity, and Change
*People, Places, and Environments
*Individual Development and Identity
*Production, Distribution, and Consumption

Illustrations:
The illustrations in this book consist of sepia colored photographs. An entire page at the end of the book is dedicated to “Photo Credits.” The photographs are not of the exact situation or child discussed in the book, but similar situations and children.

Access Features:
*Table of Contents
*Index
*Diagram
*Photographs with captions
*Foreward
*Voices in the Book-gives an overview of the children we will read about
*Afterword
*Timeline
*Further Reading

How I would use the book in the classroom:
This book looks into the life of immigrants when during 1880-1924. One thing you could do in the classroom with this book is compare what they thought life in America would be like to what it was really like. You could make a timeline of the lives of the children discussed in the book, showing especially where they ended up.

My response to the book:
One of the things that stood out to me was the hard work these children did. They worked constantly to make a better life. Several generations sacrificed so much to make sure their children had a better life. Several of the children did not attend high school, or they did not attend to later in their lives. They saw school as a way to make their life better and they worked hard to be able to go. They often went to school at night after a long day at work, staying up even later to study. It made me think we take school for granted now a days. In our minds to many times school is something we have to do, not something we want to do in order to better our lives.

Related Texts:
*Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side by Raymond Bial
*The Battle With the Slum by Jacob A. Riis
*97 Orchard Street, New York: Stories of Immigrant Life by Linda Granfield
*Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman
*At the end of this book the author suggest several related texts in “Further Reading.”

Other:
Chapters are divided with subtitles that further help the people understand the material. This book is written in a chapter book type of format.