When the young woman hired to look after the baby took ill, Minna tied her son to his crib rather than miss work.
In the summer of 1896, when Dubin was five, his family immigrated to Philadelphia. By 1900 Simon Dubin was the gynecology chief of the dispensary staff at Mt. Sinai Hospital, later renamed Albert Einstein Medical Center, and was especially interested in improving medical care for immigrants. Minna Dubin worked as a seamstress until she was able to find work as a chemist.
Al Dubin felt himself an outsider in school. The family spoke Yiddish, Russian, and German at home, so he had to learn English. His busy parents gave him unlimited freedom, which his daughter and biographer, Patricia Dubin McGuire, suggests that he perceived as a lack of caring on their part. When Al was ten, his mother gave birth to an unplanned second child, Joseph. When his Uncle David noticed that Al enjoyed reading, he gave the boy a subscription to St. Nicholas magazine. Al soon began to enter the magazine's monthly contests for best drawing, painting, story, and poem. He eventually won a first prize for poetry and discovered that he had a knack for meter and rhyme.
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