Bread and Roses, Too

Description

By Katherine Paterson
Houghton Mifflin Company
Ages: 10 to 12

With two teenagers as the protagonists, Paterson introduces the reader to the IWW, major figures such as Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, multi-nationality worker solidarity, the role of labor songs, and the various tactics used by the company to undermine the strike.

Rosa’s mother is singing again, for the first time since Papa died in an accident in the mills. But instead of filling their cramped tenement apartment with Italian lullabies, Mamma is out on the streets singing union songs, and Rosa is terrified that her mother and older sister, Anna, are endangering their lives by marching against the corrupt mill owners. After all, didn’t Miss Finch tell the class that the strikers are nothing but rabble-rousers—an uneducated, violent mob? Suppose Mamma and Anna are jailed or, worse, killed? What will happen to Rosa and little Ricci? When Rosa is sent to Vermont with other children to live with strangers until the strike is over, she fears she will never see her family again. Then, on the train, a boy begs her to pretend that he is her brother. Alone and far from home, she agrees to protect him . . . even though she suspects that he is hiding some terrible secret.

From the beloved, award-winning author of Bridge to Terabithia, here is a moving story based on real events surrounding an infamous 1912 Bread and Roses Strike.

“[Paterson] remains a smooth storyteller, and this is an informative exploration of a key moment in U.S. labor history.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books