From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family by June Cummins (review)

From Sarah to Sydney chronicles the life of Sydney Taylor (1904-1978), née Sarah Brenner, who was instrumental in making Jewishness a relatively accepted part of American life. Born in New York City to immigrant parents from Germany, she was the third of seven children, the first five of whom were girls who became principal characters in the All-of-a-Kind-Family books. Published between 1951 and 1978 and based on Taylor's own childhood on the Lower East Side and in the Bronx, they were the first mainstream books for children featuring Jewish characters. Before this time, small Jewish presses published biblical and holiday stories for an almost exclusively Jewish readership, but Jews were never featured protagonists in the books available to most American children. So important was Taylor's role in children's literature that the signature award for Jewish-American children's literature would come to be named in her honor.

The All-of-a-Kind Family books play a key role in Cummins's narrative in two ways. First, the books serve as reference points for chapters discussing Taylor's childhood. However, by reading the books against an unpublished autobiography by Taylor's sister Charlotte, audiotapes that Charlotte and another sister, Ella, recorded late in life, and other unpublished sources, Cummins reveals the poverty and struggle that are largely absent from Taylor's books. Second, Taylor's own life transformed when she suddenly became a bestselling author. Not finding satisfying books about Jewish life for her daughter Jo, Taylor began telling stories about her own childhood, eventually writing them down. Taylor's husband Ralph submitted one of the manuscripts to a contest sponsored by Follett Publishers and Taylor's manuscript won, launching her career as an author.

The All-of-a-Kind Family books are not the only things that make Taylor's life story significant. Part of what makes From Sarah to Sydney both pleasurable to read and useful as history is Cummins's deft movement between context and specific details. One of the most creatively and effectively organized chapters of the book, "Gateways to a Wider World," focuses on the ways in which Taylor's childhood was anchored not by a synagogue but by the large public school she attended, the public library, and the Henry Street Settlement House. In each case, these institutions were dominated by wealthy, established Jews of German extraction who were determined to Americanize more recent Russian and Eastern European immigrants. In that sense it is impossible to separate Jewish and Americanizing influences in Taylor's life.

It is Taylor's uniqueness that primarily propels the narrative. Sarah began calling herself Sydney in her late teens "to be different and make a mark" (77). At around the same time she began keeping a "thought book," a wonderful source that Cummins mines fruitfully as a guide to Taylor's inner life. Like many young Jews of her era, Taylor became involved in socialist organizations, in her case the Young People's Socialist League, through which she met future husband Ralph Schneider (whose Yiddish last name became its English equivalent of Taylor). The couple shared a commitment to socialism and a love for the arts, with Ralph playing music and Taylor acting, dancing, and writing plays. Ralph, who also ran a successful drugstore, co-founded the dance criticism journal Dance Observer. Taylor ran the drama program at the Jewish Camp Cejwin for her entire adult life and wrote all the plays that her campers performed.

From the Cejwin camp director Taylor said she "learned how important it was not to belabor the points of Judaism but rather to come upon them gently in rich and colorful expression," a lesson she took into her children's books (211). Follett editor Esther Meeks, who knew more about children's books than about Judaism, also helped Taylor find the right balance of Jewishness...