Children's fiction

Dave at Night

by Gail Carson Levine

281 pages · First published 1999

Eleven-year-old Dave Caros lives in a Hebrew orphan asylum in 1920s New York and survives by staying tough, angry, and suspicious of adults. After sneaking out at night, he meets an eccentric old man named Solly who treats him with a respect and warmth largely absent from institutional life. Dave’s nighttime adventures gradually connect him to the city beyond the orphanage and to truths about his own family. Gail Carson Levine’s historical middle-grade novel combines humor and tenderness with the realities of institutional childhood, immigration-era New York, and a boy learning that belonging can be found in unexpected relationships.