Word Book

Just this past week, we began reading what must be Sava's first "real" book, where words predominate over pictures. It's a fictional story based on a real event at a NY factory in the early 1900's, called Fire at the Triangle Factory. It tells the story of two girls--a Jew and a Catholic--who manage to escape a fire together; in the process, they reveal their friendship to the Jewish girl's father, who learns to overcome his mistrust of the "others" from Italian neighborhoods when he learns that the Catholic girl saved his daughter from the fire. It's a sweet book, with pictures that look like they were drawn in the early 1900's, even though the book is only a dozen years old. Sava sits through the whole 40+ pages patiently and seems quite taken with the story: there is the fire, of course, which is always bound to get his attention, but I think he appreciates the human drama, too. He wanted to know what "poor" meant, and then today I explained to him what "paying rent" means as well.