At age 10, Teddy Hensen is orphaned and abandoned by his relatives. Forced to the streets of New York City he seeks refuge with a band of other orphaned children but is driven off, beaten, bloodied and freezing. Facing starvation and hypothermia, Teddy is taken in by the kindly officer Smith and placed in the Thirty-second Street Orphanage of The Children’s Aid Society. From there, Teddy, Johnny, Deena and Donna and a score of other orphans take an orphan train out west during the late 1800s as each hopes to find happiness with a new foster family.
The title, All My Tomorrows, comes from a line in the story when a peace officer places his life on the line to rescue Johnny Smith from certain death at the hands of cruel criminals so Johnny can have all his tomorrows. The authors artfully chronicle several orphans’ journeys from desperate destitution into a different, exciting and often unexpected future. These books make excellent historical readings for students to capture the work of Charles Brace and The Children’s Aid Society in the US during the mid to late 19th century. The morality and spirituality of the day are nicely conveyed, the stories interesting, but with the number of characters involved, the point of view is necessarily somewhat distant.
Age Range: 8 and up
Genre: Historical (19th Century USA)
Series: The Orphan Trains Trilogy, Book 2 of 3
Multnomah Books, 2003
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