Rifka's parents are actors in the Yiddish Theater, and the little girl often spends time there. Sometimes she visits the other actors backstage as they get ready. "There are beads and ribbons hanging over mirrors and pretty dresses hanging on the racks. The actresses laugh and joke and tell each other not to say bad words in front of me." Sometimes she explores beneath the stage with Papa, a magical world of old props. And on one particular night, bored during the show, she climbs a set of stairs backstage and suddenly finds herself in the middle of the performance. But she handles it all as if she were born to it. A story based on author Betty Rosenberg Perlov's childhood memories has an engaging voice and many intriguing details, which are incorporated into Cosei Kawa's warm, whimsical illustrations. An author's note provides more information about the Yiddish Theater in New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Ages 4-8)

Rifka's parents are actors in the Yiddish Theater in New York, but one day Rifka finds herself center stage in a special role! A slice of immigrant life on New York's Second Avenue, this is a unique book about a vanished time and a place – the Yiddish theater in the early 20th century―made real through the telling of the true life story of the 96-year-old author as a little girl.