A more typical American scene would be hard to imagine: a young mother and her daughter in Wal-Mart. Yet as she pushed the shopping cart with the 4-year-old Esther Miriam sitting, princesslike, in the ...

Born with complex congenital heart defects, Gitty has spent her childhood in and out of hospitals, struggling through procedures, catheters, and open-heart surgery in Boston. Her journey began at only ...

Or the night before, or the night before that. Every night, I go to bed exhausted and wait for sleep to envelop me. But it doesn’t. I can’t go to sleep knowing that this might be Gitty’s last night.

Peach-hued Gitty is a curly-headed, relentlessly optimistic girl; her “unflappable friend” Kvetch is a grumpy purple bird. They share a Jewish heritage, expressed through a few visual hints (a Star of ...

Each year around this time, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names for the past year. This year, New York state’s list includes the Yiddish name Gitty, as ...