A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

And I'm a producer! (I turn up in the last line.) The article has some very nice quotes; check it out!

Jim Henson Company Developing Drama Series ‘All-Of-A-Kind Family’ Based On Sydney Taylor Books

This does NOT mean it will definitely be a series. We still have to sell it to networks, and that may not happen. But we're going to try.

I have been trying to make this happen for the last year or more, and I can finally say so.

Click on the author tag to read more about the books.

I've been rereading this charming series about a Jewish family in turn-of-the-century New York City. It remains a great read, full of vivid details of everyday life, and incredibly relatable despite the massive changes that have happened since then.

Uptown starts off with one of my all-time favorite stories, in which the girls walk into the wrong house and eat their aunt's neighbor's dinner. I also loved the stories where Ella and Jules go out on a date to a fancy restaurant, each convinced the other is super comfortable there until they realize that both of them have never been to one before, and when Henny borrow's Ella's fancy dress without asking, spills tea on it, dyes it with tea to cover it up, and replaces it in the closet without saying anything.

This book also features WWI. In retrospect it had an awfully rosy picture of how a soldier would come through the war if he was physically unhurt.

Downtown is not as much of a favorite as the rest as a lot of it focuses on a neighborhood boy, an Italian immigrant named Guido whose mother is sick. I just wasn't that into Guido. However, I really identified with the girls taking turns getting the best spot near the stove in winter, and Henny having a day where everything goes wrong and she stirs up trouble she doesn't even enjoy, and has no idea why she keeps doing it. On that note, Henny is hilarious in this book. My favorite bit is when she rips up her clothes to impersonate a tragically poor girl so she can sneak into a local Christmas charity event where they're giving away fancy dolls.

This book was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, but I don't think I realized there were sequels.

It's about a Jewish family in New York in 1914 with five little girls two years apart. The oldest is twelve, and the youngest is four. It's a sweet, gentle book, filled with period atmosphere and kindness and relatable kid issues, from losing a library book to inexplicably refusing to eat soup you normally love. Upon re-reading, it had been visited by the opposite of the Suck Fairy - it was, if anything, even better than I remembered. The publication date is 1951 but it feels timeless. The illustrations are great too.

As a kid, I loved it for being that rare book about Jewish girls that was not about the Holocaust. Apart from being crushingly depressing, those books were not very relatable for an American Jewish girl in Los Angeles in the 70s-80s, especially since I didn't have Holocaust survivors in my family. But I completely related to being obsessed with books and dolls, getting lost in a crowd, being poor, and fighting and bonding with friends.

Recommended for literally anyone who wants something sweet, cozy, and domestic, without being saccharine. It's pure comfort reading, and I can't wait to get to the sequels. And if you know any little Jewish girls who haven't already read it, it would make a nice gift.

Thanks to Rosefox for reminding me to re-read this!

All-of-a-Kind Family (All-of-a-Kind Family Classics)