"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the coming-of-age story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet fromative years in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. This poignant and moving classic of American literature is filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and incident.

A Study Guide for Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

The story of the Nolan family, including daughter Francie, and life in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn during the early part of the 20th century.

In A letter to Elia, Martin Scorsese directs and narrates a full-length documentary on the life of director Elia Kazan; also included are 15 films directed by Elia Kazan selected by Martin Scorsese.

"In the vein of Dominicana and My Brilliant Friend, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer love in a Pakistani-American community. Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. But when a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia's idyllic childhood is shattered forever. In middle school, Razia befriends a new girl, Taslima, and they begin to chafe...

[The author's] story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her warring parents and seven siblings led a life of uproar, but one full of love and tenderness as well. Growing up, Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But just when Esmeralda seemed to have learned everything,...

"Set in Brooklyn in the 1920's Tomorrow will be better tells the story of Margy Shannon, a shy, joyfully optimistic young woman just out of school who lives with her parents and witnesses how a lifetime of hard work and poverty has worn them down. Determined not to end up like them, Margy takes refuge in her dreams of a better life. Her goals are simple: to find a husband she loves, have children, and live in a nice home. When she meets Frankie Malone,...

Bidemmi draws pictures and tells stories about cherries. Bidemmi makes up a series of stories from her vivid imagination and illustrates each story with her crayons. Each story that she tells has something to do with cherries and the discarded cherry pits, but she never quite finishes any one story until she begins telling one that involves herself. In her last story she imagines herself eating cherries and planting the cherry pits until they grow...

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg's memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents--and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it.

Delve into the culinary world with Julia Rothman's delightful visual tour of cookery and international cuisine. Histories and curiosities of food around the world are illustrated and explained with Rothman's uniquely charming style. What does an asparagus fork look like? What country puts banana sauce on their French fries? What's the difference between fish fillet and fish steak? Indulge yourself with a recommended daily allowance of facts and...