A few days ago I had a meeting with a Jewish religious school director. She proudly showed me the children book collection she maintained for her school. She explained the categories she color-coded the books and pulled out a dozen items enthusiastically to showcase them. Seeing how limited knowledge I have in the topic she insisted lending me a book. That’s how I read my first Jewish themed children book ever: the “Fire at the Triangle Factory,” written by Holly Littlefield and illustrated by Mary O’Keefe Young. It is the story of two young American girls, a Catholic from Polish background and a Jewish, working together in the early 1900′s in a New York City sweatshop. When a fire breaks out they save each others’ lives. This soften the heart of the Jewish girl’s father, who based on his memory of Poland mistrusted Catholics. The moral of the story is clear, the illustrations are nice watercolors. The author’s note at the beginning and the afterword at the end provide the context of the story: the events were real, albeit the characters are fictional. 146 women died that day in the fire or from jumping off the building.
