by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 27, 2010

"That summer in the city, long ago, began the same as all the other summers...

"Hot, smelly, and so very noisy."

Morning Glory Monday cheerfully tells a magical story about life in New York City tenement neighborhood in the 1930s. (There's a fish store and a man who sells pickles out of a barrel...) A little girl lives in a "small, hot apartment," and her best friend Jackie lives in the apartment building across the alley, sleeping with his five brothers in the same bed. The girl's mother is homesick for Italy, and the girl and her father try to cheer her up.

They visit Coney Island - with its famous Cyclone rollercoaster and the boardwalk along the beach. But instead of winning the grand prize at a ball-toss game - the big, pink stuffed dog - the girl receives an envelope filled with seeds. "Seeds can work magic, if you let them," says the man behind the booth (wearing an old-fashioned straw hat.) And sure enough, the seeds eventually lead the story to a very happy ending.

Author Arlene Alda has written for Life, Vogue, and People, according to the book's jacket (and she's the wife of actor Alan Alda). But she's also a native New Yorker, and the book treats the immigrant experience with a tender respect. The author dedicates the book to Ruth Abram of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, "whose work dignifies the everyday lives of immigrant families" (and to Kathy Lowinger, a publisher at Tundra Books, "who knows of the immigrant experience first hand.") Tundra Books is the oldest publisher in Canada, and the the book's credits also reveals they received financial support from the Canadian government and the Ontario Media Development Corporation. Because this book is so thoughtful about the immigrant experience, at first I wondered if it was for the book's historical subject matter!

The little girl plants the seeds in a tiny flower box on apartment's the fire escape, and her mother watches her curiously. And then one Monday, "which was the same as every other summer Monday, something poked its head out of the moist earth." But the flowers don't just sprout out of the flowerbox. They grow long twisty vines that climb up and down the fire escape, adding color to the sides of all the buildings on the block. The girl's mother declares that she loves them, but those miraculous morning glories keep on growing. They cover all the buildings in the city, and even cheer up the man who sells pickles.

And when the girl and Jackie grow up, they get married - and open a flower store!

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