Fire at the Triangle Factory Book

This story is a young reader picture book that describes the life of Italians living in America in the early 1900's. The story follows a young Italian girl and a young Jewish girl who both work in a large factory in New York City. This piece of historical fiction discusses the hardships of two girls from very different cultural backgrounds becoming friends and it also details the actual fire that happened in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911. More than 100 people were killed in this fire, including workers who were immigrants as young as 14 years old. This fire and the death of so many people was the reason many laws were changed around the conditions in which factory employees were permitted to work. The stories plotline is engaging and the illustrations allow young readers to much more easily visualize what it was like for struggling immigrants working in factories during the early part of the 1900's.