This is one of the very best books I know about making the world a better place. And in Pearl Moscowitz, Arthur Levine, the author, has given us an urban heroine from whom we can all draw inspiration. Pearl has grown up on a street that has seen significant changes over the years, as one immigrant group after another has moved in and moved on. The neighborhood is enriched by these people, who brings their foods and games and children with them. Over the years, they have sat and shared their lives under the gingko trees that line the street, trees planted as the result of Pearl's mother's ctivism. And over the years, the trees have succumbed to natural disasters and to human disasters, until there is only one left. And then a man from the electric company comes with an order to cut it down.
"Now, as I said, Pearl had seen a lot of change on Gingko Street, but she was not about to sit idly by while they cut down the last gingko." She urges food upon the thin and hapless young man, and by the time he is done with the kasha and the knishes and the kugel, he is too full to work. But he comes back the next day. An Pearl is ready for him: "'Such a handsome boy,' she whispered loudly to Mrs. Char. 'And absolutely identical to my nephew Joseph.'" All the neighborhood ladies take out their wallets stuffed with photos and the stories that accompany them. But on the third day, when the man from the electric company shows up again, there is almost no one around. And so Pearl does the only thing left to do--she chains herself to the tree with a bicycle chain. What happens next?
Arthur Levine has concocted an inspiring lesson in civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, and urban street smarts. Robert Roth's rich, powerful watercolors giv us Pearl in all her aging glory. Sh has the thick gasses, heavy uper arms, and thick waist of a woman of a certain age--and you could not ask fr greater beauty than that shown here. (Arthur A. Levine, Pearl Moscowitz's Last Stand. Illustrated by Robert Roth. New York: Tambourine Books, 1993.)