Anniversary of Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire

On this day in 1911, a massive fire caused 146 people to die in Manhattan. Most of the victims were young immigrant women, working in horrible conditions, without access to escape. It was determined later that the doors had been locked, causing some women to jump to their deaths, while others were overcome by smoke and the fire itself.

The Locket, a historical fiction account of this deadly fire, is currently available in both library and paperback versions, as well as in ePUB and PDF formats. Learn about Galena, her working conditions at the factory, how her family was affected by this fire, and more. Written by Suzanne Lieurance, the back of the book also contains information about the real history behind the story.

This title is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Enslow.com and your preferred vendor.

Author Interview with Suzanne Lieurance

Enslow Author, Suzanne Lieurance, talks about being an author and writing her latest Enslow book, The Lucky Baseball: My Story in a Japanese-American Internment Camp for Grades 3–6. To read the full interview, click here.

Tomorrow is the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

One of the most horrific events in the history of New York City, until September 11, 2001, was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, most of whom were recent immigrant Jewish women. This factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building, which was in Greenwich Village, close to Washington Square Park. The doors to the stairwells and exits had been locked, which meant that for some of these women, their only means of escape was jumping out of windows.

As a result of this fire, many cities and states passed anti-sweatshop laws and improved fire codes.

Suzanne Lieurance, who wrote The Locket, a historical fiction title about the fire, also wrote The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and Sweatshop Reform in American History, geared toward the middle school reader.

The Locket, also geared toward the middle school reader, discusses the life of Galena, an eleven-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant who works with her older sister Anya at the Triangle Shirtwaist company, and is a witness to the fire.

Suzanne also created a book trailer on The Locket:

On this day in 1911 . . .

A fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women. To read more about this, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire explains how this horrific fire impacted the national labor reform movement.

To read an historically accurate, fictional account of this tragedy, The Locket follows the working experiences of two Russian-Jewish sisters who were working in this factory on the day of the fire.

   

Japanese-American internment during World War II

In 1942, during World War II, the U.S. government moved Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes to detention centers.

The Lucky Baseball is a fictionalized account of that time.

The Tragic History of the Japanese-American Internment Camps written by Deborah Kent also details the sad history of these camps, the reasons behind their creation, and how the internees made the best of their deplorable situation, and finally received an official apology from the U.S. Government.