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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780440238003
ISBN number: 0440238005
Label: Yearling
Manufacturer: Yearling
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 160
Printing Date: August 22, 2006
Publishing house: Yearling
Age index: Ages 9-12
Release Date: August 22, 2006
Sale Popularity Level: 149639
Studio: Yearling
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
SEWING! NO ONE could hate it more than Dina Kirk.
Endless tiny stitches, button holes, darts. Since she was tiny, she’s worked in her family’s dressmaking business, where the sewing machine is a cranky member of the family.
When 13-year-old Dina leaves her small town in Germany to join her uncle’s family in Brooklyn, she turns her back on sewing. Never again! But looking for a job leads her right back to the sewing machine. Why did she ever leave home? Here she is, still with a needle and thread—and homesick to boot.
She didn’t know she could be this homesick, but she didn’t know she could be so brave either, as she is standing up to an epidemic or a fire. She didn’t know she could grow so close to her new family or to Johann, the young man from the tailor’s shop. And she didn’t know that sewing would reveal her own wonderful talent—and her future.
In Dina, the beloved writer Patricia Reilly Giff has created one of her most engaging and vital heroines. Readers will enjoy seeing 1870s Brooklyn through Dina’s eyes, and share her excitement as she discovers a new world.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Rated by buyers 
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My favorite book is "A House of Tailors" by Patricia Reilly Giff. This book is mainly historical fiction. The theme of this book is never give up on any thing. My favorite character is Dina Kirk. Dina is my favorite character because she works hard, never gives up and is very brave. The author's writing style is the kind that brings you in in the beginning and lets out in the end. The book is very exciting and entertaining.I like this book because it tells you about facts that really happened and it is funny. The story is about a girl (Dina) who works hard to have her Uncle give her the respect she wants and treat her like part of the family. I would think that this book is great for everyone over 7 and feels the same way I do. I give this book 2 thumbs up.
Rated by buyers 
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I am a mom of a 4th grader. I read this book and cried twice. It's a little intense or over the heads of 4th grade readers, depending on their comprehension level. Wonderful book, though. The best of the Sunshine State books I've read so far this year.
Rated by buyers -
I had to read this book for school and I did not think I would like it. But I did!!!!!!! Read this book, it is good!!!!!!!
Rated by buyers -
Historical fiction is that huge genre of children's books that I am just not as familiar with as I should be. The field tends to be dominated by such big names as Richard Peck and, in this case, Patricia Reilly Giff. As a child I was always far more interested in books of fantasy and magic, and I am afraid that very little has changed since I have grown. But "A House of Tailors" is one of those well-written works of historical fiction that can draw in even a fantasy-preferring twit like myself. Giff brings to beautiful colorful life the world of 1870 Brooklyn, New York. The dirt, the disease, and the small human pleasures of it all.
Dina is desperately jealous of her older sister Katharina. While Dina must stay in Germany doing what she hates most, sewing, Katharina is going to America to live with their rich Uncle. At this moment in 1870 Germany is at war with France, an annoyance to Dina who likes to swap patterns with her friend Elise on the French side. But when Dina escapes one morning to do her usual swap and is caught by German soldiers thinking her a spy, her escape can only be brought about one way. She will have to be the one sent to America and not her sister. Dina is embarrassed and distraught but the fact that she won't be sewing anymore is some comfort. Yet when she arrives in America, the streets her uncle takes her down become dirtier and dirtier. Finally they reach the last one, climb all the steps to the top floor, and enter the apartment. That's when Dina sees the sewing machine in the middle of the room and realizes that she has simply exchanged one house of tailors for another. Now she must save her money to return to Germany, but not before growing to love her family, the boy in the men's shop down the street, and this crazy mixed up town called Brooklyn where dreams of the future came sometimes come true.
Giff's heroine undergoes a perfectly conceived series of changes and she grows and learns realistically in this new world of America. At first, Dina is really quite awful. When she runs off and does something without thinking you instinctively begin to cringe, knowing full well that some awful comeuppance is about to occur. At the same time, however, she's intelligent and ingenious, not to say heroic. It becomes clear that her true love is hatmaking and not sewing, and the sequences in which she describes the creation of a hat are truly amusing and wonderful. They reminded me at times of the hatmaking in Diana Wynne Jones's, "Howl's Moving Castle". Then there is the storytelling, something that Giff has perfected over the years. This book is an almost perfect series of adventures and misadventures with a steady rising/falling action that retains interest right up until the end. If you want something on the mid-19th century German immigrant experience, I can think of few books that tell their tales half as well as this one.
Giff tells us in her Afterword that the Dina featured here is based on her own great-grandmother's life. One hopes that Ms. Giff has more ancestors from whom to plunder this kind of rousing story. Whether the book's showing the ways to battle smallpox or escape from tenement fires, it's a grand testament to a long gone time. A truly enjoyable book that kids will find themselves surprised to enjoy.
Rated by buyers -
Dina's stitches are small and straight. She has a sense for colour and fabric. Dina's gift is sewing but she hates it. She longs to go to America and live with her uncle and his family but when she ends up having to flee to New York from her home in Germany she finds her dream and the reality of life in Brooklyn are far apart.
Giff can put the reader into the setting of a story better than any other writer. In her novel, "Nory Ryan's Song," we knew when the blight had overtaken the potato crop because we could "smell" it. In this book we sense the crowded streets, the cooking in the tenements and the soot from the fires of Brooklyn in the 1870s. The crowding, disease and long back breaking hours of labor that were part of the immigrants life are accurately depicted. The joys of the her new land include her very first taste of ice cream, a new friend, Johann, and her niece and nephew. Dina longs for her home and family in Germany but finds she cannot imagine leaving her new family and friends. She takes great pride in her talent for hat and dressmaking and ultimately makes a place for herself in her new country. Dina is a wonderful character full of strength and love.
Giff wrote this story as a tribute to her great grandmother. Her touching afterward describes which stories from the book which came directly from her own family history.
Patricia Riley Giff is one of the most honest writers I have ever read. She is like an accomplished musician, every note of her books rings true and touches the heart
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