New York: Lower East Side Fiction
Explore the best Lower East Side fiction books set in New York. Discover captivating stories and novels that bring the vibrant culture and history of NYC's Lower East Side to life.
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All-of-a-Kind Family
by Sydney Taylor
Meet the All-of-a-Kind Family -- Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie -- who live with their parents in New York City at the turn of the century. Together they share adventures that find them searching for hidden buttons while dusting Mama's front parlor and visiting with the peddlers in Papa's shop on rainy days. The girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it involves holidays and surprises. But no one could have prepared them for the biggest surprise of all!
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A Nickel, a Trolley, a Treasure House
by Sharon Reiss Baker
With gentle humor and fondness, Baker tells a story of a young boy who lives in a tiny tenement apartment on New York's Lower East Side who takes a momentous streetcar journey to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Full color.
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What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street
by Elsa Okon Rael
A young Jewish girl living on Manhattan's Lower East Side attends her first "package party" where she learns about the traditions of generosity, courage, and community among Jewish immigrants in the early 1900s.
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The Gold Coin
by Pamela Dell
In 1901, thirteen-year-old Dimitri, his younger brother, and their parents are beginning to feel at home in New York City's Lower East Side, where they have lived since their Jewish faith led them to flee Russia thirteen months earlier.
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Storied City
by Leonard S. Marcus
Presents twenty-one walking tours of New York City, including more than one hundred sites of literary significance and featuring more than two hundred books about New York written for young readers.
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The Pushcart War
by Jean Merrill
A satire on modern city life depicting an outbreak of war between truck drivers and pushcart peddlers.
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The Notorious Izzy Fink
by Don Brown
In the 1890's, thirteen-year-old Sam copes with poverty and violence on the streets of New York's Lower East Side.
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Dear Emma
by Johanna Hurwitz
In her letters to a Vermont friend, eighth grader Dossi, a Russian, Jewish immigrant living in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1910, shares her thoughts about her new brother-in-law, the diphtheria epidemic, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
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When Jessie Came Across the Sea
by Amy Hest
A thirteen-year-old Jewish orphan reluctantly leaves her grandmother and immigrates to New York City, where she works for three years sewing lace and earning money to bring Grandmother to the United States, too. Reprint.
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The Castle on Hester Street
by Linda Heller
Julie's grandmother deflates many of her husband's tall tales about their journey from Russia to America and their life on Hester Street.
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Immigrant Girl
by Brett Harvey
Becky, whose family has emigrated from Russia to avoid being persecuted as Jews, finds growing up in New York City in 1910 a vivid and exciting experience.
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When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street
by Elsa Okon Rael
When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street is Elsa Okon Rael's beautiful story of family relations and the celebrations that can often ensue. While staying with her grandparents in New York City in the mid-1930s, eight-year-old Zeesie joins in the celebration of Simchat Torah and sees a different side of her stern grandfather.
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Rivka's First Thanksgiving
by Elsa Okon Rael
Having heard about Thanksgiving in school, nine-year-old Rivka tries to convince her immigrant family and her Rabbi that it is a holiday for all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.
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The King of Mulberry Street
by Donna Jo Napoli
In 1892, nine-year-old Dom’s mother puts him on a ship leaving Italy, bound for America. He is a stowaway, traveling alone and with nothing of value except for a new pair of shoes from his mother. In the turbulent world of homeless children in Manhattan’s Five Points, Dom learns street smarts, and not only survives, but thrives by starting his own business. A vivid, fascinating story of an exceptional boy, based in part on the author’s grandfather.
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Water Street
by Patricia Reilly Giff
Brooklyn, 1875: Bird Mallon lives on Water Street where you can see the huge towers of the bridge to Manhattan being built. Bird wants nothing more in life than to be brave enough to be a healer, like her mother, Nory, to help her sister Annie find love, and to convince her brother, Hughie, to stop fighting for money with his street gang. And of course, she wishes that a girl would move into the empty apartment upstairs so that she can have a new friend close by. But Thomas Neary and his Pop move in upstairs. Thomas who writes about his life in his journal--his father who spends each night at the Tavern down the street, the mother he wishes he had, and the Mallon family downstairs that he desperately wants to be a part of. Thomas, who has a secret that only Bird suspects, and who turns out to be the best friend Bird could ever have.