For fans of All-of-a-Kind Fam­i­ly, here is the true sto­ry of how Sarah Bren­ner, a poor girl from New York City’s Low­er East Side, became Syd­ney Tay­lor: dancer, actress, and suc­cess­ful children’s book author.

Sarah Bren­ner might have come from an all-of-a-kind fam­i­ly (five sis­ters who all dressed alike), but she was always one of a kind. Grow­ing up in a Jew­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly on New York’s impov­er­ished Low­er East Side, Sarah loved vis­it­ing the library, cel­e­brat­ing hol­i­days with her fam­i­ly, and tak­ing free dance class­es at the Hen­ry Street Set­tle­ment. But she was always aware of things that weren’t fair — whether it was that women couldn’t vote, or how girls were treat­ed in her school, or that her par­ents had had to leave Europe because they were Jew­ish. When she grew up, Sarah changed her name to Syd­ney and became an actress and a dancer, but she nev­er for­got the impor­tance of fight­ing unfair­ness, whether it was anti-Semi­tism at her job or the low wages of work­ers. And when her daugh­ter com­plained that it wasn’t fair that there were no books about Jew­ish chil­dren like her, Syd­ney put pen to paper and wrote a one-of-a-kind children’s book.

From well-known Jew­ish children’s author Richard Michel­son, this is the sto­ry of how Sarah became Syd­ney and how she showed chil­dren the joy of see­ing their cul­ture reflect­ed on the page.