A Day of Pleasure

An ALA Notable Book and winner of the National Book Award for Children's Books, Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Day of Pleasure shares his memories as a boy growing up in Warsaw, Poland prior to World War II.

In this series of short stories, the Nobel Prize–winning author reveals his childhood as part of Warsaw's Hasidic community from the early years of the twentieth century, through the First World War, and into the 1930s before the Nazi Holocaust destroyed their culture.

From his school days when his parents struggled with poverty in the ghetto, through the divide between traditionalists and those determined to modernize their lives, to the wars and fascist regimes that made them flee their home, Singer's stories recreate a world long gone but never forgotten.

“At a time when in children's literature the power of the imagination is frequently lost sight of or diluted, it is fortunate that we can honor a great storyteller. Mr. Singer has created out of remembered fragments of his own childhood a place instantly familiar where life is not neat and orderly, where the adventures of a boy throw into sharp and recognizable focus those resistant elements of the ever-troubled human condition.” —From the judges' citation, National Book Award for Children's Literature