Confession: I actually found this book years ago, but wanted to reread it.
I love PJ Lynch as an artist and loved this story of an immigrant who brings her traditions and talents with her to America and, I believe, makes the country better with those traditions and talents.

A sweet story of an immigrant girl who learns to sew lace and moves to America, leaving her beloved grandmother behind. Will they be reunited?

Young Jewish girl's journey across the sea on her own to live with someone she doesn't know. Her local rabbi sends her to keep his sister-in-law company after her husband died. She saves enough to send for her grandmother.

I'm glad that explicitly Jewish picture books exist; the more explicitly [demographic] [medium] out there, the better the odds that there will be great ones. But I don't know that this is one of the great ones: It's a relatively straightforward, earnest but sanitized, immigration narrative. Including "rest in peace" is weird--this might be a different story if written today, when it could be even more Jewish. I recognize Lynch's art from The Haunted Lake, and it's exquisite and richly detailed and classical. All perfectly nice but not especially memorable.

This is a really beautiful story of family love and endurance. I happened to read this book with my mother and she cried, so I know it is able to evoke emotion. While this story does not portray the extremely hardships that awaited European immigrants to America, it is a beautiful representation of the new lives that immigrants were able to secure through hard work. It is a great example of a children’s historical fiction book.

The art was gorgeous. The 20th century European immigrant experience was beautifully captured in the narrative Hest and Lynch designed. I read this book when I was seven, but still remember how iconic Jessie was.

Simple enough for a first or second grader to understand. Clear images (both word and illustrations) to give a child an idea of what the immigration experience was like, from a teenager's viewpoint. I liked this a lot.