Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
- VIDEO
Audible sample Sample
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [75th Anniversary Ed] (Perennial Classics) Paperback – November 6, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
A special 75th anniversary edition of the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century.
From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior―such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce―no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans’ life lacked drama. By turns overwhelming, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the Nolans’ daily experiences are raw with honestly and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life―from “junk day” on Saturdays, when the children traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Smith has created a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as deeply resonant moments of universal experience. Here is an American classic that "cuts right to the heart of life," hails the New York Times. "If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you will deny yourself a rich experience."
- Print length493 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial Modern Classics
- Publication dateNovember 6, 2018
- Dimensions7.9 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
- ISBN-100060736267
- ISBN-13978-0060736262
- Lexile measure810L
"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Tomorrow Will Be Better | Joy in the Morning | Maggie-Now | |
---|---|---|---|
Customer Reviews |
4.4 out of 5 stars
766
|
4.5 out of 5 stars
900
|
4.3 out of 5 stars
579
|
Price | $13.59$13.59 | $12.69$12.69 | $14.15$14.15 |
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships....[Smith’s] book has light and air in it, comedy and pathos, and an underlying rhythm pulsing to the surge and flow of humanity itself. No matter what happens to the Nolans, they never lose their awareness of the sweetness and wonder of life.” — Orville Prescott, New York Times
“Betty Smith was a born storyteller.” — USA Today
“One of the books of the century.” — New York Public Library
“A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life. . . . If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience.” — New York Times
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn deserves to be thought of as one of the greatest American novels.” — The New Yorker
“One of the most cherished of American novels….It is the Dickensian novel of New York that we didn’t think we had.” — New York Times
From the Back Cover
The American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.About the Author
Betty Smith (1896–1972) was a native of Brooklyn, New York. Her novels A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Tomorrow Will Be Better, Joy in the Morning, and Maggie-Now continue to capture the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers worldwide.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
By Smith, BettyPerennial
ISBN: 0060736267Chapter One
Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
Late in the afternoon the sun slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan's house, and warmed the worn wooden fence. Looking at the shafted sun, Francie had that same fine feeling that came when she recalled the poem they recited in school.
This is the forest primeval. The murmuringpines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green,
indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld.
The one tree in Francie's yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.
You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
That was the kind of tree in Francie's yard. Its umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire-escape. An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire-escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. That's what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in summer.
Oh, what a wonderful day was Saturday in Brooklyn. Oh, how wonderful anywhere! People were paid on Saturday and it was a holiday without the rigidness of a Sunday. People had money to go out and buy things. They ate well for once, got drunk, had dates, made love and stayed up until all hours; singing, playing music, fighting and dancing because the morrow was their own free day. They could sleep late -- until late mass anyhow.
On Sunday, most people crowded into the eleven o'clock mass. Well, some people, a few, went to early six o'clock mass. They were given credit for this but they deserved none for they were the ones who had stayed out so late that it was morning when they got home. So they went to this early mass, got it over with and went home and slept all day with a free conscience.
For Francie, Saturday started with the trip to the junkie. She and her brother, Neeley, like other Brooklyn kids, collected rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other junk and hoarded it in locked cellar bins or in boxes hidden under the bed. All week Francie walked home slowly from school with her eyes in the gutter looking for tin foil from cigarette packages or chewing gum wrappers. This was melted in the lid of a jar. The junkie wouldn't take an unmelted ball of foil because too many kids put iron washers in the middle to make it weigh heavier. Sometimes Neeley found a seltzer bottle. Francie helped him break the top off and melt it down for lead. The junkie wouldn't buy a complete top because he'd get into trouble with the soda water people. A seltzer bottle top was fine. Melted, it was worth a nickel.
Francie and Neeley went down into the cellar each evening and emptied the dumbwaiter shelves of the day's accumulated trash. They owned this privilege because Francie's mother was the janitress. They looted the shelves of paper, rags and deposit bottles. Paper wasn't worth much. They got only a penny for ten pounds. Rags brought two cents a pound and iron, four. Copper was good -- ten cents a pound. Sometimes Francie came across a bonanza: the bottom of a discarded wash boiler. She got it off with a can opener, folded it, pounded it, folded it and pounded it again.
Soon after nine o'clock of a Saturday morning, kids began spraying out of all the side streets on to Manhattan Avenue, the main thoroughfare. They made their slow way up the Avenue to Scholes Street. Some carried their junk in their arms. Others had wagons made of a wooden soap box with solid wooden wheels. A few pushed loaded baby buggies.
Francie and Neeley put all their junk into a burlap bag and each grabbed an end and dragged it along the street; up Manhattan Avenue, past Maujer, Ten Eyck, Stagg to Scholes Street. Beautiful names for ugly streets. From each side street hordes of little ragamuffins emerged to swell the main tide. On the way to Carney's, they met other kids coming back empty-handed. They had sold their junk and already squandered the pennies. Now, swaggering back, they jeered at the other kids.
"Rag picker! Rag picker!"
Francie's face burned at the name. No comfort knowing that the taunters were rag pickers too. No matter that her brother would straggle back, empty-handed with his gang and taunt later comers the same way. Francie felt ashamed.
Continues...Excerpted from A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Smith, Betty Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial Modern Classics (November 6, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 493 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060736267
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060736262
- Lexile measure : 810L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #92 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #236 in American Literature (Books)
- #304 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the story of Francie Nolan and her family. She grows up in the tenements in Brooklyn and yearns to be educated. She reads a book every day from the library and is determined to read them all. Her brother Neeley and herself struggle to survive and collect scrapes and other items to try to get food to survive. Their mother Katie is a hardworking woman who cleans three tenement buildings to give them somewhere to live. Their father, Johnny, is a dreamer who works as a singing waiter, but drinks away most of his income. Will Francie be able to work her way to a better life?
This novel is a book that you don’t read fast for the action, it’s a book that you read slowly to enjoy the beauty of the writing and a look into the past that you don’t usually see. Books tend to focus on the middle and upper class, and it is the rare book that actually delves into how hard life was if you were living in poverty. What the kids had to eat and their lack of food was really sad. I felt bad for Katie. Johnny was the fun parent, but Katie kept it together and tried to make fun games so that her kids didn’t know what they were missing. She did not receive the same love from Francie that Johnny did.
The novel also takes a realistic look at alcoholism and its real impact on the family. Johnny is a likeable guy, but I liked how people’s perceptions of him changed when they realized the hungry kids next to him were his own kids. He was in the thralls of the disease of alcoholism and he couldn’t figure out to get out. This book did not sugar coat the impact it had on him and his family.
The book did not have a straight forward narrative and had different sections that skipped around between 1912 when Francie and Neeley are kids, to around 1900 when Katie and Johnny meet and fall in love, back to 1912 and moving forward as the kids grow up. I liked the way the narrative flowed.
There were so many scenes of this book that I loved. I love how Johnny helped Francie to go to the neighborhood school that she really wanted to go to. I couldn’t stop thinking about when Francie saw her neighbors stone an unmarried mother who was strolling her baby. I read that author Betty Smith witnessed a similar scene as a child and it helped inspire this book. I liked how Francie noted that the only difference in the unmarried mother and others was there the unmarried mother didn’t have a father to force her sweetheart to marry her.
Francie had an interesting job toward the end of the novel. It took me awhile to figure out what exactly she was doing and then I realized she was basically a human Google at the time reading through papers to find information that people would pay for research. I thought it was fascinating.
I watched the movie version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn years ago on Turner Classic movies and I loved it. Johnny does not match the description in the book and it leaves much of the story of the book out, only focusing on the 1912 part of the story. I’ve found a copy of it and I’m hoping to schedule a movie showing next month for the Back to the Classics Book Club.
Rogue Book Club thought the book was interesting, but was not sure why it is such a beloved classic. Would the club have felt different if we read it when we were younger? I’m looking forward to talking about this book at Classics Book Club tomorrow night.
Favorite Quotes:
“She wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship.”
“Because the child must have a valuable thing called imagination. The child must have a secret
world which live things that never were. . .. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.”
“A person who pulls themselves up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he left behind him in the cruel upclimb.”
“Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet it costs nothing.”
Overall, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a great look into poverty in the early twentieth century and an inspiring story of how one girl’s determination and hard work could get her out of it. It is a beautifully written novel.
Book Source: I purchased a copy from Amazon.com last year.
Francie’s grit and determination are heart warming. She has a hard life but she does have the love of a family and somehow things always work out in the end for her. She never seems to know true despair, but then again, I’m not sure I can fault Smith for that since this is Francie’s younger years when she would be most hopeful and resilient. But I do admire her resilience. Great main character!
There is a moment that I think seems to signify the title of the novel quite eloquently. It is when Francie’s mother Katie Nolan is speaking to others about her baby, who is struggling to live: “Who wants to die? Ever thing struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of the sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” I think this a fitting quote and moment because it typifies the entire struggle of the Nolan clan, symbolic of their poverty and their circumstances, yet the tree’s struggle and will to live a metaphor for courage and perseverance amid those difficulties.
This is not a book where there are ultimately rainbows, unicorns and butterflies on the other side of desperate times and life’s harsh realities. At times, the novel can be quite depressing and many characters struggle hard fights and sometimes lose in painful ways, and you feel for them.
Nevertheless, I think this adds to the power of the novel because Smith has an honesty approach in telling her tale. There’s a lot of pathos and emotion amid A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and so I was glad to be reading another book alongside this one to sort of balance everything out.
On a side note, I know this book is often categorized as a “young adult” novel, but I would sort of question that due to some of the subject matter.
I think A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a very powerful book. It does take an emotional investment on the part of the reader at times but, ultimately, we become invested in the Nolans and Francie and their lives.
Top reviews from other countries
Além disso, há problemas com espaçamento/organização principalmente de trechos de músicas e canções que aparecem, aspas que abrem sem jamais fechar, e a cada 150 caracteres há a supressão de um espaço, fazendo com que as palavras fiquem grudadas. Nenhum cuidado por parte da editora/Amazon, claramente sem nenhuma atenção humana.
Nem sempre o avanço da tecnologia é benéfico.