It is 1911. Crammed into a three-room flat in a Mott Street tenement, the large Taglia family needs all the help they can muster. Spunky songbird Lily wants to help by baking Daily Bread at the bakery like big sister, Margaret. But Margaret says Lily is just a little kid, and there is more to baking Daily Bread than height and an artist’s heart. Lily learns to navigate in a grown-up world when facing bullies, disasters, dotty bakers, and treacherous streets to cross by herself.
Antoinette Truglio Martin wrote Daily Bread from the stories her grandmother, aunts, and mother told around the dinner table. Daily Bread is a historical fiction middle grade novel set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1911, as seen through the eyes of Lily Taglia, a nine-year-old child of Sicilian immigrants. Antoinette is also the author of the memoir Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer (She Writes Press) and the children’s picture book, Famous Seaweed Soup (Albert Whitman and Company). She proudly holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook/Southampton University, had several essays published in local journals, and wrote regular columns for local periodicals. As a retired educator, she now conducts author visits in the schools and professional development seminars for teachers.
Check out her blog, Stories Served Around The Table, where you can find a bevy of family tales and life’s musings.
https://www.facebook.com/AntoinetteTruglioMartin2017
https://twitter.com/StoriesServed
Praise for Daily Bread
Daily Bread is a humbling experience as you read through the chapters and gain a relationship with the characters. It embraces child labor, the hardships immigrant families endured during a time spoken very little about. I couldn’t put the book down and am hoping for a sequel. Daily Bread is brilliant.
Marie Yervasi Youth Services Librarian, Westhampton Beach Free Library
Daily Bread is a page turning story about family ties, community and struggle on Mott Street in 1911. Antoniette Truglio Martin will captivate young readers wanting to know more about the immigration period as they travel through time with this heartfelt story about the way it was and how Daily Bread from the bakery wafts a ripple effect of meanings for the characters and their places in the world.
Adrienne Cirone Associate Principal K-6, Reading Specialist
Daily Bread, is an impressive piece of MG historical fiction about the Taglias, a Sicilian family who immigrated to America at the beginning of the twentieth century.You will fall in love with the Taglia sisters and their dreams. This novel is definitely a page turner!
Truglio Martin has beautifully crafted a story rich with the history of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1911. The author deftly captures the essence of the immigrants’ experiences in their new homeland.
Suzanne Travis High School English Curriculum Consultant