Book Review - Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff

Title: Water Street
Author: Patricia Reilly Giff
Genre: Young Adult
Challenges: 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, Book Around the States Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, 2009 Support Your Local Library, 2009 Audiobook Challenge, 20 Books in 2009, Pages Read Challenge, 2009 YA Challenge, 100+ Reading Challenge – 2009, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009,

Rating: 5/5
No. of Pages: Audio (176)
Published: 2006
From the back: Brooklyn, 1875. Bird Mallon lives on Water Street, where you can see the great towers of the Brooklyn Bridge being built.
Bird wants nothing more in life than to be brave enough to be a healer, like her mother, Nory; to help her sister Annie find love; and to convince her brother, Hughie, to stop fighting for money with his street gang. And of course, she wishes that a girl would move into the empty apartment upstairs so that she could have a friend close by.
But Thomas Neary and his father move in upstairs. Thomas, who writes about his life in his journal – about Pop, who spends each night at a bar; about the mother he wishes he had; and about the Mallon family downstairs, which he desperately wants to be part of. Thomas, who has a secret that only Bird suspects, and who turns out to be the best friend she could ever have.

Mine: What a wonderful period story and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It must have been such an exciting time to watch the bridge being built. The times were so different and what was expected. It tells the story of 2 children who become friends and protect each other from the evils of what may be.

What a nice way to hear about how the city was buzzing about the new bridge and how it affected all the levels of the city. Nory the midwife and healer, Annie the box maker and a wonderful baker, Hughie here brother becomes hard after getting the bends after going down in the water to help with the bridge.