There are certain interactions between people that only someone who has siblings can understand; the side glances parents exchange when one favors a different child, the automatic reciprocity that comes between the siblings and realizing that no matter what they do they will always tally it up against their siblings. While being on the brink of that moment when you realize your parents don't know everything, alienation extends to the siblings as well. Its a moment of introspection, year of self assessment and marks beginning of transformation. Its the harshest moment when one breaks the fence provided by innocence of childhood and takes their first step into the complex, messy and confusing world of adolescence. 
 Francie Nolan wants education, knows how to make most of any situation she is in, loves books and is incredibly pragmatic for her age. Is it the poverty and casual harshness that the life has thrown at her has made her so? Or is she designed this way? Every thing that an everyday YA preaches is beaten on its head and is thrown to the curb. Life sucks, Francie Nolan notes in not so many words. It doesn't stop her from achieving something more by bending the rules because in real life, it rarely works out the way people plan. 
 Betty Smith writes like she sees it. She has condensed stories of the families from around the world and set it up in Brooklyn. There are no unicorns and rainbows, no sweet segues or hidden prince charming hiding in the nooks, there aren't happy endings for all the characters and most of all, the children look at life for what it is and not the romanticized version of it. Its a story of survival and making the most of what life has to offer. And when it fails, take a stock of the situation, re-plan and start over. 
 I only wish I had read this when I was a teen. If the story can have such an impact to an adult reader, I only wonder how the experience would have been then.