Starting from Home: A Writer's Beginnings

by Milton Meltzer

Overview

Moving, funny, and thought provoking, Starting From Home reveals the influences that shaped a remarkable person and writer, while opening windows on the world that has shaped us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780595089031
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/01/2000
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.37(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

Table of Contents

	Roots--or Twigs	1
	"Better They Don't End Up in a Sweatshop, Too"	13
	The City of Three-Deckers	19
	A Hunger for Words	31
	The Dump and the Candy Store	41
	Fifteen Cents an Hour	53
	Becoming Somebody	65
	Living in Two Worlds	75
	"Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright"	89
	A Radical Tradition	97
	"What This Country Needs"	107
	Tragic Towns	117
	A Pair of Stockings	125
	Seventeen	133
	Afterword	145

Editorial Reviews

Like Beverly Cleary, whose memoir, A Girl from Yamhill , was published this year, Meltzer grew up in the Depression in a hard-hit, working-class family. Born in 1915 in Worcester, Mass., and raised in a neighborhood of immigrants (his parents were Austrian Jews), Meltzer learned firsthand about subjects he would later explore in his distinguished books for children: ethnicity, class and protest. ``I didn't know I would be a writer,'' Meltzer explains. ``Yet something was going on to shape my interests and point of view.'' This memoir has the compassionate yet probing tone of Meltzer's social histories. It is a pleasure to read, with charming confessions of kissing girls and reading dime novels. From the beginning, Meltzer was blessed with a hunger to learn and with an innate faith in the futuretraits that have carried him far and that shine throughout this book. Photos not seen by PW. Ages 12-up. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly