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A tree grows in Brooklyn

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...

Full description

Main Author: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972 (Author)
Other Authors: Burton, Kate (Narrator)
Format: Audiobooks eAudiobook Downloads eAudiobook
Language: English
Edition: Unabridged.
Subjects:
Poor families > Fiction.
Girls > Fiction.
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) > Fiction.
Downloadable audio books.
Online Access: Go to Downloadable Audiobook Here.
Summary: 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 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.
Physical Description: 1 online resource (14 audio files) : digital
Playing Time: 14::5:5:
Audience: Text Difficulty 3 - Text Difficulty 4
UG/Upper grades (9th-12)
810
5.8
ISBN: 9780060856083
Author Notes: Betty Smith, December 15, 1896 - January 17, 1972 Betty Smith was born December 15, 1896, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended grammar school in Brooklyn, completing only the eighth grade. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, she worked in a factory, in retail and clerical jobs in New York City and eventually became a reader and editor for Dramatists Play Service, as well as an actress and playwright for the Federal Theater project and a radio actress. She attended the University of Michigan, from 1927 to 1930, as a special student. While attending the University of Michigan, some of her one-act plays were published, and she also worked as a feature writer for NEA (a newspaper syndicate) and wrote columns for the Detroit Free Press. She went on to Yale University Drama School, from 1930 to 1934.

Smith became a member of the faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, from 1945 till 1946. She was a member of the Authors League and the Dramatists Guild. Smith is perhaps best known for her work "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which became an overnight success for the first time writer. She won the Avery and Jule Hopwood first prize of $1,000 in 1931; the Rockefeller fellowship in playwriting and Rockefeller Dramatists Guild playwriting fellowship while at Yale and the Sir Walter Raleigh award for fiction in 1958, for "Maggie--Now."

Betty Smith died on January 17, 1972.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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