DAY OF THE BLIZZARD

New York's Great Blizzard of '88 finds twelve-year-old Katie taking care of her sick mother and her five-year-old twin brothers and worrying about Papa, a railroad conductor due back from Buffalo. More urgent still, this is the day that Mama's garnet brooch, the one she wore when she was married, must be redeemed from the pawn shop. So Katie goes herself--out into the blinding snow and freezing wind, up into the steaming el and, when it gets stuck, down a ladder to the street; then, after losing and finding the precious envelope, through more snow and wind to the pawnshop, which is closed! Kindness, luck, and perseverance (not unreasonably) see her through, and, with the horrors of the storm chillingly present, Katie's deliverance can only be a Godsend. But such an obviously tear-stained story would have gained a little stature if the reader had been apprised, at the start rather than at the close, that this was also a Historic Occasion. Physically, the book is unprepossessing--an undersize specimen (5 3/4 x 7 1/8) with bloodless pictures.