BOOK REVIEW: WATER STREET

December 24, 2008

By Lyndsay Cunningham, 10

Water Street

Author: Patricia Reilly Giff

Published: January 2008, Yearling

Pages: 544 (paperback)

 

Exciting and action packed, this historical novel makes you want to keep reading because you never know what will happen next.

Two 13-year-olds wander around Brooklyn and Manhattan, spying, chasing and healing people.

Newbery Honor book author, Patricia Reilly Giff, is best known for Polk Street School novels.  Water Street takes place in the late 1870s.

Bird Mallon and her friend, Thomas Neary, are in the summer before their eighth grade year. Thomas has problems at home – his dad’s an alcoholic, his older brother died of fever and his mother ran away. Thomas spends most of his waking hours with Bird and her family.

Bird’s parents are Irish immigrants who left the country during the potato famine. Their love for farming compels Bird’s older brother, Hughie, to fight at taverns to earn the family money to purchase land in New Jersey. Conflict arises when Bird, who is worried about her brother, tries to get him to stop.

Giff’s story is unpredictable and sad, but doesn’t bring you to tears. Bird’s mother is a midwife and healer who saves many people’s lives. Her dad is a construction worker building the Brooklyn Bridge, still a famous landmark in New York today.

When Bird and Thomas find her brother, Hughie, he’s badly injured. All by herself, the 13-year-old helps heal him.

Here’s an excerpt from that exciting chapter:

Thomas led the way into a small room with sawdust on the floor, where Hughie lay, surrounded by men. She pushed until she was in front of them. Blood came from his nose, thick and shapeless now, his eyes swollen almost shut, deep gashes in his knuckles, but the worst cut was a cut over his eyebrow.

A man knelt over him, a bottle of whiskey in his upraised hand, pouring it over the cut.

Her face burned. “Get away from him!” She raised her own hand. The man stepped back and the others fell away, until there was an empty circle around Hughie.

The author keeps it interesting by alternating the chapters, first from Bird’s view and then Thomas’s perspective.   

While the book has no illustrations, the writer paints the pictures in words. I could easily imagine what Bird and the others looked like.

Here’s a vivid scene where Bird and her mother are walking to a patient’s house who is ready to give birth:

Bird glanced at Mama, the freckles on her nose, her hair with a few strands of gray coming out of her bun ten minutes after she’d looped it up: Mama’s strong face, which Da always said was just like Bird’s. She couldn’t see that. When she looked in the mirror, she saw the freckles, the gray eyes, and the straight nose, but altogether it didn’t add up to Mama’s face.

She was glad to reach the house on the corner, the number 112 painted over the door, and the vestibule out of the sun.

They climbed the stairs, the light dim as they stopped to catch their breath on each landing. “Let me.” Bird took the blue cloth medicine bag that hung over Mama’s shoulder. “It seems your patients are always on the top floor.”

“Ah, isn’t it so,” Mama said, holding her side. “And the babies always coming in the dead cold of winter, or on steamy days like this.”

Certain parts of the book are slow, but I still recommend reading it.  One of my friends who doesn’t like to read even enjoyed this book. I think girls around age 10 or 11 would like it best. It puts you in the environment of living 138 years ago and how kids weren’t that different than from now.