  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 01/01/2016 Nettie and Nellie are just five years old when they are taken from their derelict parents and placed in a New York orphanage in 1910. During the next year, they have plenty of work but little to eat. Still, the twins are nervous when Miss Hill, a Children’s Aid Society agent, takes them on an orphan train journey to find a new home. Taken in by a kindly storekeeper and his harsh wife, they endure her cruelty bravely until news that Nellie has been whipped reaches Miss Hill. She moves them to another household, where they find a warm welcome and a “forever home.” Illustrated with line drawings and archival photos, this engaging narrative portrays children facing real hardships. An appended note from Abbott (a pseudonym for Susan Hill) provides information about child welfare in the early 1900s, the orphan trains, and the lives of the real Nettie and Nellie Crook, who were profiled in Andrea Warren’s We Rode the Orphan Trains (2001). An engaging entry in the Based on a True Story series. - Copyright 2016 Booklist. Loading...
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