Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, September 2006 (Vol. 40, No. 5))
Everything Paterson writes is excellent. This historical novel is about the strike by workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. In some ways it is a continuation of the theme of her novel Lyddie, about a mill worker in Lowell, Massachusetts in the mid-19th century. She tells of two young people's experience over the several months of the strike. It's interesting because neither of them, Rosa or Jake, is an enthusiast for workers' rights; they just get swept up in the events surrounding them. Rosa's mother and older sister are workers who are completely committed to the strike. Rosa is slightly ashamed of them, their poor English, their risk-taking. Jake is a worker himself, abused by his drunken father, illiterate, a petty thief. The two are sent with other children from Lawrence to Barre, Vermont, to socialist families supporting the strikers by taking in the starving children, taking care of them until the strike is over. An Italian American couple takes in Rosa and Jake, who are pretending to be brother and sister. The man, an accomplished stone worker and nobody's fool, soon suspects Jake is lying, but his response is unexpectedly kind. The way Paterson works in the historical details that are known--the terrible plight of the workers and their families, the evolution of the strike, the support from the growing labor movement around the country--is moving and sound. She speculates on how the slogan of the strike, Bread and Roses, Too, came into being, which fits in nicely with her characters and their feelings.

Pat Dole (KLIATT Review, July 2007 (Vol. 41, No. 4))
In 1912 in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, immigrant workers are being exploited by greedy mill owners. An additional pay cut finally ignites a general strike that is ruthlessly suppressed by local police and militia. Rosa Cerutti, the young daughter of a poor Italian widow, is so bright that her mother and older sister work in a mill to support the family so that she can have the luxury of going to school. When the anti-strike violence escalates dangerously, the strikers decide they must send their children away from Lawrence to cities where union members have agreed to shelter them for the duration. Rosa is destined for Barre, Vermont. Jake, an illiterate, desperate, abused boy she has met accidentally, persuades Rosa to pretend that he is her brother so that he can get on the train with her and escape to a new life. With the new name of Salvatore, Jake is warmly welcomed along with Rosa by an older Italian couple in Barre, who shower them with new clothes and good food. All the while, though, Rosa is in an agony of fear for the safety of her mother and sister, especially when she finds out that they have been jailed and her little brother taken away from them. In the end the plot is neatly wrapped up. Narrator Raver has a grand time portraying the effusive Italian women who figure prominently in the story (based upon a true incident) and she voices an Irish priest and a rough-spoken boy with equal ease. Category: Fiction Audiobooks. KLIATT Codes: J--Recommended for junior high school students. 2006, Listening Library, 6 cds. 7 hrs.; Vinyl; plot, author, reader notes., $39.00. Ages 12 to 15.