Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945-2020: Irreverent Remembrance by Jeffrey Demsky (review)

But with Meeks’s help, Taylor hit upon a winning formula and also benefitted from a rapidly expanding children’s book market. Her first book was enormously successful, becoming a bestseller and earning critical acclaim. She went on to publish four more All-of-a-Kind Family books as well as a handful of other books for children. Two All-of-a-Kind books that Taylor had difficulty publishing in the 1950s because of their more realistic descriptions of hardships were later accepted in the 1970s. Taylor was not especially observant as a Jew. She and Ralph were initially married in a civil ceremony, but Taylor’s father Morris insisted that the couple have a proper Jewish wedding, and so they lived apart for two years until finally having a Jewish wedding. They were married for fifty years, until Taylor’s death. Their daughter, Jo, was raised in contexts that were more progressive than Jewish per se, attending the Bank Street Nursery School and the Little Red Schoolhouse in New York and the artsy-lefty Buck’s Rock summer camp (Jo needed to find a space for herself away from Camp Cejwin, where all the Brenner sisters worked). All in all, Cummins tells the story of a pioneering author who was also very much a human being, with flaws, biases, and weaknesses. This book was a labor of love for Cummins, who was writing it until her untimely death in 2018 from ALS. Alexandra Dunietz made revisions to the draft that Cummins managed to complete and prepared the manuscript for publication. The resulting book is a great tribute to Cummins as well as Taylor.