Teaching About the Lives of Immigrants with Peppe the Lamplighter

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, I am a first generation American which simply means that both of my parents were born in Greece and came over to America.

Because of their experiences as immigrants, they instilled in us children the value of hard work and made us proud to be American and Greek.

For this reason, Peppe the Lamplighter, a Caldecott Honor book, sparked an interest for me.

It is about an Italian immigrant family in New York roughly around the early 1900s or more properly "A long time ago when there was no electricity" (Bartone 1).

Peppe, the main character, needs to find a job in order to better support his struggling family.  After looking everywhere, the lamplighter comes and asks Peppe to continue lighting the lamps as he goes back to Italy.

Though Peppe rejoices to have a job, his father looks down on the job as worthless.  Eventually, the father's pessimism wears down Peppe's enthusiasm to light the lamps resulting in Peppe one night refusing to light the lamps.

This story beautifully illustrates the value of a job that seems unimportant.  It can be especially applicable to children who often are responsible for small chores, but they do not see the value in it because they want to do big people's chores.

This story even shows the value of seemingly invisible jobs.  Just because the job is in the background and no one sees it, does not mean that it is not important.  It is only until the completed task goes undone that people truly realize how important the task is.

This lesson is something that Peppe learns.  In fact, his little sister looks at him adoringly and says, "Peppe, when I'm bigger, I want to be like you.  I want to light the streetlamps.  I think it must be the best job in America" (27).

The pictures reflect the story.  Most of the pictures are shrouded in shadow, but there is always a pinpoint of light that draws the viewer.

Without this light, the scene would be dark; just like without Peppe lighting the lamps the streets are dark.  The very realistic full page drawings brings one into Peppe's world; the pictures make the story come to life.

Personally, though, I wish the author had included more about what it meant to be an Italian immigrant family living during this time period.

Coming from a Greek family, I wanted to know how this family had lived during their time period.  We just get that Peppe lives in a tenement and must provide for his family.

Through adult scaffolding, a child would be able to understand what that means.  However, the bigger issue is that there is no documentation about the story.  On the dust jacket, there is a blurb about the author that explains that this story is loosely based on one she heard from her grandfather.  Why loosely?  I do not know.

Also if I had more details about the family, I might understand why the youngest daughter is roaming the streets of New York after dark.  This is an important part of the story, but I really did not understand why she would be left alone like that.

However, though the story had these slight hiccoughs, like I stated earlier, the story is a wonderfully written with beautiful enrapturing images.  I would recommend this book.






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