Bessie’s Pillow Changed Us All

A Review of “Bessie’s Pillow” by Linda Bress Silbert

Bessie’s Pillow is a book with accompanying historical background at www.bessiespillow.com, published by Stong Learning, Inc.

So, What Did My Kids Think?

This book is, hands-down, the best-loved of any my children have ever read.

“Yes! I knew Bessie is smart! Her Tateh and Mameleh taught her really well!”

“Nooooo! He only wants to date you! Run away!”

“Sheesh! Why can’t she tell what his motivation is? What is wrong with girls?”

“Why were those sweat shops in New York owned by Germans?”

“How can people be so mean to each other? Why won’t someone, like Lou, help Bessie’s sister?”

“I am absolutely never trying Sauerkraut or Herring – but I would like to try Baked Alaska!”

“Don’t stop reading! We need to find out what happens to Bessie next!”

That is a sampling of feedback that ran a continual course through my time reading “Bessie’s Pillow” out loud to my children.

My children talked (and yelled) to Bessie while I read. They asked her questions and celebrated her successes. They mourned her losses. And they tried to convince her to make the choices they thought best. This is something they have not done since they were very little and it shows how much the story of Bessie captured and engaged my kids.

 My Kids Loved This Book

Both my teens decided that this book was absolutely the best part of their homeschool day and demanded that I read every afternoon. As I read, my daughter would knit – stopping only to shout instructions to Bessie along the way. My son just sat and looked out the window while we read each day, trying to imagine what everyone looked like. Sometimes I would have to stop reading as they discussed the options Bessie had and why one decision would be better that another. Then they would urge me to continue to read so they could discover which choice Bessie ended up making in her life.

 My children are fascinated by true stories, especially since my mother was a young war orphan at the end of WWII. Her father was captured by Russians and her mother killed in the area between Gdanz and the former East Germany. Even today we don’t know where they came from exactly (Prussian, German, or Polish). Many of my Aunts and Uncles were trapped in East Germany until the wall came down and with so many stories untellable, my children hunger for true stories of immigrants escaping danger to come to America. That is the kind of story you will find in ‘Bessie’s Pillow’.

What is in the Book

This book is a fantastic choice to learn about life in the Pale in the 1800’s under Russian domination. Readers will also learn about the life of immigrants in America before WWI. My two teen children got a front row seat to the good and the bad and even the ugly: how to tell when someone has TB (or wasting disease), how independently owned shops functioned in the early 1900’s, the role of women in American society, and what the Pogroms were and why people tried so hard to escape Lithuania.

The writing is very good, the storycraft is excellent, and the ties to our history through just the right amount of description are captivating.

How We Used It

Every day, we read a chapter or two of Bessie’s Pillow after we finished reading the other lessons for the day. My kids treated Bessie’s Pillow as an ice cream dessert that comes at the end of a meal: they looked forward to each new chapter.

How Bessie’s Pillow Changed Us

Nearly every day the chapters we read included information about life in New York or Europe during the late 1800’s. This lead to further activity like looking up a Foxtrot dance or who has played at Carnegie Hall. We talked about immigrants becoming entrepreneurs in America.

The most important lesson my kids took away from Bessie’s Pillow was an explanation that Bessie’s Tateh gives her. All of us wonder why bad things happen to good people. How can God allow that? Bessie’s Tateh showed my children how you cope with loss and reconcile God’s goodness with the hurt that life can bring.

Included Enrichment Activities & Further Information

The book is wonderful as it is filled with all sorts of ‘hooks’ for further study. Many of the topics are included in the accompanying web site (www.bessiespillow.com) but the book creates a curiosity in my children that expanded even beyond those topics.

I used the additional information on the bessiespillow.com site to add into the conversation while we read the story.

One evening my daughter asked me if we could make a poppy seed cake. She ate it quite a bit when she was little as there was a Jewish grocery store nearby and we shopped there often for cakes, challah, and cookies. We found a recipe from 1879 and together we baked the cake. Later, over tea and poppy seed cake, we read about the origin of poppy seed pastry in Eastern Europe and about poppies in general. Poppy seeds are even the preferred filling for Hammantashen (a Jewish cookie-like pastry celebrating the defeat of Haman as told in The Book of Ester). In all, it was one of those really special times – shared between mother and daughter.

 A Final Note on Bessie’s Pillow

Thank you, Bessie Dreizen and Linda Bress Silbert! You gave my children the gift of a window into life in America what it was like to be an immigrant to the United States as we entered the twentieth century. The story carries all the joys and heartbreaks of real life experiences with grace and without whitewash. You have deepened my childrens’ understanding and enhanced their empathy forever.