A 2007/2008 SSYRA Finalist
A House of Tailors
by Patricia Riley Giff
(a teacher's guide and resource for lesson plans)

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.

Web Resources:

• Read more about the author by visiting her web site.
• Remember to use the Elementary School Online Reference Resources provided by Sarasota County Schools to research Brooklyn and Germany in the 1870s, as well as sewing and tailoring.

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