An Ellis Island Christmas Tenderly Recaptures an Immigrant's Experience

When I think of immigrants pouring into Ellis Island, the first image that usually pops into my head is from An American Tail, the Don Bluth-directed movie in which young Fievel Mousekewitz becomes separated from his family shortly before their arrival in America. The Mousekewitzes are Russian Jews, and that movie begins with a humble Chanukah celebration.

In An Ellis Island Christmas, written by Maxinne Rhea Leighton and illustrated by Dennis Nolan, the narrator, Krysia Petrowski, is a Polish Christian, but in many ways her story resonates with Fievel’s. There is an element of familial separation, as her father is already in America and she, her mother and her brothers Josef and Tomek are going to meet him.

Though Krysia hates to leave her friends, she longs to see her papa and yearns for the security of the land her mother envisions. “In America,” Mama says, “tables are filled with food, and there are no soldiers with guns on the street.” This is strikingly similar to the exuberant song early in American Tail in which the mice optimistically declare, “There are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese!”

Like the Mousekewitzes, the Petrowskis spend a long time cooped up on the boat taking them to America, and Krysia writes rather graphically of the seasickness most of the passengers eventually suffer. Once they arrive in America, she describes the fear that consumes her as she worries about being turned away and her curiosity as she embraces new experiences like eating bananas and calling Saint Mikolaj by the name Santa Claus, all while wondering when and how they will find her father again.

The book is written in such a way as to make it relatable to children, with historical tidbits sprinkled in and a page-long addendum featuring several facts, such as the fact that for a period of about 30 years around the late 1800s and early 1900s, 70 percent of new arrivals came through Ellis Island, 80 percent of whom were granted immediate entry into the country. Nolan’s intricate watercolors wonderfully capture both the enormity and the intimacy of the experience.

While this is a story that includes a Christmas celebration, the primary focus is on immigration, making it a book that is less tied to the season than most. Children with an interest in history and especially descendants of immigrants who came through New York about a century ago would do well to read An Ellis Island Christmas.