all of a kind family

for some time now i've been trying to track down this series of books that i read as a child, maybe when i was about 11 years old.  i remember the books very clearly; where they were kept in the school library, the illustrations, the size of them. i must have borrowed the set about three times and no one else except for me seemed to read them.

they were the books of  my childhood of which i have the strongest memories, and in a nostalgic mood, i've been hunting around on ebay for them. it took some time because there's lots of different editions of them and i wanted to get the books with exactly the same illustrations as the ones i used to read. so finally i found the first two books and they recently arrived in the mail. 

those of you who look at my blog regularly will know it's very new york centric. i seem to gravitate towards stuff from that city without even trying. the funny thing is that a few years ago i wasn't interested in new york whatsoever. it was only when the rayman and i visited a year ago now (my first time) because we thought we 'should' and also because we have family there, that i fell in love with the place.

so now reading through the books has been hilarious and somewhat spooky! the series is called All of a Kind Family and the stories center around a jewish family who live in the lower east side of new york. the stories detail the adventures and daily activities the five daughters get up to like going to the rivington street market and each girl spending a penny on a special treat like a big sour pickle, a baked sweet potato or a white paper cone of hot chick peas. there's great excitement in going to the new york public library once a week because they were too poor to buy books, there are special outings to coney island and pleasure in going to the candy store and weighing up the pros and cons of each type of candy before spending those precious pennies.  the books are interesting as they describe new york at the time and talk about the east side as 'not being pretty', there was no grass or trees and the river smelled like fish, ships and garbage. in addition, the books i bought are old library books so with each turn of the page i get that special old library smell - you can imagine...

the books also have chapters in them called 'purim play', 'succos' and 'yom yippur, day of atonement' and now i am now married to a jewish person. speculation on how and why all this has happened might be for another post, or another blog all together, so for now here are some illustrations from the books: