All-of-a-Kind Sydney

Dolls of Our Lives

Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney

Society & Culture, History

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1951, Sydney Taylor introduced All-of-a-Kind Family to the world. Her novel about a Jewish family living on the Lower East Side in the early 20th century features five American girls: Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie. These tight-knit sisters love to read, eat candy, and occasionally, dust for their mother. We talk about our (first) read of Taylor's book, which holds up all these years later as an absolute delight. We also discuss the biography From Sarah to Sydney (2021), by the late Jane Cummins and Alexandra Dunietz. How much of Sarah Brenner’s life was put into the all-of-kind-family? How did Sarah become Sydney Taylor? Join us in separating fact and fiction.

Original air date: May 27, 2022

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome everyone to American Girls the podcast. This is the podcast where we're reliving the American
0:15.3	Girls series book by book except here on Patreon where we're basically doing whatever we want
0:21.2	that we think is in the world of the show and sometimes responding to your requests.
0:26.4	So today, Allison, are we taking on our listener request?
0:30.6	How would you describe what we're doing today?
0:33.6	We are tackling a much requested and much beloved children's book as well as a
0:40.0	biography of that children's book author, we are talking about from Sarah to Sydney, the
0:46.4	woman behind all of a kind family, and our first time reading all of a kind family. to say I wasn't really aware of this author or the series of books for which she's famous until you know we kind of got into making this show and we heard from folks about it.
1:10.9	Yeah so people often tell us about their other favorite childhood books outside of
1:16.2	the world of American Girl or things that are sort of adjacent.
1:20.7	And when we released our episode with Leah about the Mali books and what people in Mali's circumstances would have known about the Holocaust and Jewish culture, we got this huge response that when we got to Rebecca Rubin
1:35.7	we would have to read all of a kind family. And I'll just say this book gave me this
1:42.1	totally heartwarming afternoon.
1:45.0	I wish I had read it sooner.
1:47.8	You know, I'll be totally real and people might cancel their
1:50.8	Patreon for this.
1:52.4	There are a lot of parts about little women that are
1:55.2	a slog when you actually go back and read Louisa May Alcott from the 21st century. This is a fantastic book about a group of female siblings that you can
2:06.9	read in like one sitting. Yeah I mean when I put down this book and we read I read at least just the first volume in the series all of a kind family
2:16.7	I just sat down and was like this was delightful. Yes like that's the word that came to mind like this was delightful I felt so like cozy and held and just like I want to know this family and I feel like I really did know them by the end of the book like you know when
2:35.0	when Henny like gets into her like hijinks were like oh like that's honey being
2:40.0	honey and like you know all of them like with Sarah and all of them it's like I feel like I know
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.