Historical Fiction for Children & Young Adults: 2004-2012
Historical Fiction in the EMC & Historical Fiction Websites
Books
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Chains. Simon & Schuster, 2008.
After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.
EMC-Fiction
Anderson, M.T. Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Kingdom on the Waves. Candlewick Press, 2008.
After escaping a death sentence in the summer of 1775, Octavian and his tutor find shelter but no safe harbor in British-occupied Boston and, persuaded by Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join his counterrevolutionary Royal Ethiopian Regiment, Octavian and his friends soon find themselves engaged in naval raids on the Virginia coastline as the Revolutionary War breaks out in full force.
EMC-Fiction
Anderson, M.T. Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Pox Party. Candlewick Press, 2006.
Various diaries, letters and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.
EMC-Fiction
Armstrong, Alan. Raleigh’s Page. Random House, 2007.
In the late 16th century, fifteen-year-old Andrew leaves school in England and must prove himself as a page to Sir Walter Raleigh before embarking for Virginia, where he helps to establish relations with the Indians.
EMC-Fiction
Aston, Dianna Hutts. Moon Over Star. Dial Books, 2008.
On her family's farm in the town of Star, eight-year-old Mae eagerly follows the progress of the 1969 Apollo 11 flight and moon landing and dreams that she might one day be an astronaut, too.
EMC-Picture Books
Aubin, Henry. Rise of the Golden Cobra. Annick Press, 2007.
Though only 14, Nebi is caught up in events that will shape his country's future. When his master is brutally slain, he barely escapes into the desert. As the sole survivor of the treacherous attack, Nebi knows that only one man can stave off the destruction of this great civilization. That man is Piankhy, ruler of the African kingdom of Kush. In desperation, Nebi flees to this remote but powerful king. Set in the eighth century BCE, this epic adventure dramatizes the true story of King Piankhy's command of one of the biggest military campaigns in Egypt's history. Through Nebi's eyes, this world of furious ground battles, ship-to-ship combat, and cities under siege comes to life. But another struggle is raging in the young man's heart: Should he seek revenge against his murderous personal enemy, Count Nimlot? Or should he forgive him his terrible crimes?
EMC-Fiction
Avi. Crispin: at the Edge of the World. Hyperion, 2006.
Branded as traitors by the king's authorities, Crispin and his guardian, Bear, flee to coastal towns in fourteenth-century England, where they perform a musical juggling act and bond as a family after befriending a disfigured girl.
EMC-Fiction
Barnes, John. Tales of the Madman Underground. Viking, 2009.
In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be "normal," despite his chaotic home life with his volatile, alcoholic mother and the deep loyalty and affection he has for his friends in the therapy group dubbed the Madman Underground.
EMC-Fiction
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Boy Who Dared. Scholastic Press, 2008.
In October, 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.
EMC-Fiction
Bauer Mueller, Pamela. An Angry Drum Echoed: Mary Musgrove, Queen of the Creeks. Pi-nata Pub., 2007.
Relates the role that Mary Musgrove, a Creek Indian, played as General Oglethorpe's interpreter in colonial America, smoothing the path to cooperation between the Creeks and the English settlers and ensuring the survival of colonial Georgia.
EMC-Fiction
Blundell, Judy. What I Saw and How I Lied. Scholastic Press, 2008.
In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenage Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome change her life and that of her family forever.
EMC-Fiction
Borden, Louise. Across the Blue Pacific: A World War II Story. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
A woman reminisces about her neighbor's son who was the object of a letter writing campaign by some fourth-graders when he went away to war in 1943.
EMC-Picture Books
Bradley, Alan. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Delacorte Press, 2009.
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, must exonerate her father of murder. Armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together and examine new suspects, she begins a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself.
Leisure Reading Polk 2nd Floor
Broach, Elise. Shakespeare’s Secret. Holt, 2005.
Named after a character in a Shakespeare play, misfit sixth-grader Hero becomes interested in exploring this unusual connection because of a valuable diamond supposedly hidden in her new house, an intriguing neighbor, and the unexpected attention of the most popular boy in school. Published 2005.
EMC-Fiction
Brubaker, Kimberly. Jefferson's Sons: A Founding Father's Secret Children. Dial, 2011.
A fictionalized look at the last twenty years of Thomas Jefferson's life at Monticello through the eyes of three of his slaves, two of whom were his sons by his slave, Sally Hemings.
EMC - Fiction
Bruchac, Joseph. Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines in World War Two. Dial Books, 2005.
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue. Published 2005.
EMC-Fiction
Bryant, Jennifer. Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial. Yearling, 2009.
Visitors, spectators, and residents of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 describe, in a series of free-verse poems, the Scopes "monkey trial" and its effects on that small town and its citizens.
EMC-Fiction
Bunce, Elizabeth. Curse Dark as Gold. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2008.
Upon the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Charlotte struggles to keep the family's woolen mill running in the face of an overwhelming mortgage and what the local villagers believe is a curse, but when a man capable of spinning straw into gold appears on the scene she must decide if his help is worth the price.
EMC-Fiction
Bunting, Eve. Pop’s Bridge. Harcourt, 2006.
Robert and his friend Charlie are proud of their fathers, who are working on the construction of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
EMC-Picture Books
Campbell, Nicola. Shin-Chi’s Canoe. Groundwood Books, 2008.
Six-year-old Shin-Chi and his older sister are forced to go to a residential school for Native American children, which tries to train their natvie language, traditions, and believes with Christianity, corporal punishment, and skimpy meals.
EMC-Picture Books
Carbone, Elisa Lynn. Blood on the River: James Town 1607. Viking, 2006.
Traveling to the New World in 1606 as the page to Captain John Smith, twelve-year-old orphan Samuel Collier settles in the new colony of James Town, where he must quickly learn to distinguish between friend and foe.
EMC-Fiction
Chaconas, Dori. Dancing with Katya. Peachtree, 2006.
In the late 1920s, Anna tries to help her younger sister Katya regain her strength and joy in life after she becomes crippled by polio.
EMC-Picture Books
Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts. Puffin Books, 2006.
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.
EMC-Fiction
Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Shines My Shoes. Dial Books, 2009.
Moose Flanagan, who lives on Alcatraz along with his family and the families of the other prison guards, is frightened when he discovers that noted gangster Al Capone, a prisoner there, wants a favor in return for the help that he secretly gave Moose.
EMC-Fiction
Chotjewitz, David. Daniel Half Human: and the Good Nazi. Atheneum Books, 2004.
In 1933, best friends Daniel and Armin admire Hitler, but as anti-Semitism buoys Hitler to power, Daniel learns he is half Jewish, threatening the friendship even as life in their beloved Hamburg, Germany, is becoming nightmarish..
EMC-Fiction
Conkling, Winifred. Sylvia and Aki. Tricycle Press, 2011.
At the start of World War II, Japanese-American third-grader Aki and her family are sent to an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, while Mexican-American third-grader Sylvia's family leases their Orange County, California, farm and begins a fight to stop school segregation.
EMC - Fiction
Cooper, Susan. Victory. McElderry Books, 2006.
Alternating chapters follow the mysterious connection between a homesick English girl living in present-day America and an eleven-year-old boy serving in the British Royal Navy in 1803, aboard the H.M.S. Victory, commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson.
EMC-Fiction
Creel, Ann Howard. Under a Stand Still Moon. Brown Barn Books, 2005.
After being forced to leave her village and forget her true love, Echo is given as a bride to one of the high priests in her community, but when the crops begin to fail, she finds herself becoming a leader of her people. Set in the American Southwest in about 900 A.D., this is the story of Echo, a young woman whose destiny as a wife and mother is suddenly changed by an accident. She is forced to leave her village life and her family to marry an aged High Priest, esteemed and feared by the people. In her new life, Echo gains the priest's knowledge and magic, which permit her to help the people in a fearsome time of angry gods and the end of her civilization as she knows it.
EMC-Fiction
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. King of the Middle March. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2004.
Arthur de Caldicot, on his way to becoming a man, witnesses the horrors of the Fourth Crusade in Venice and Zara, as well as the downfall of King Arthur's court, in his seeing stone.
EMC-Fiction
Cullen, Lynn. I am Rembrandt’s Daughter. Holtzbrinck, 2007.
In Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, Cornelia's life as the illegitimate child of renowned painter Rembrandt is marked by plague, poverty, and despair at ever earning her father's love, until she sees hope for a better future in the eyes of a wealthy suitor.
EMC-Fiction
Curtis, Christopher Paul. Elijah of Buxton. Scholastic Press, 2007.
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.
EMC-Fiction
Cushman, Karen. Alchemy and Meggy Swann. Clarion Books, 2010.
In 1573, the crippled, scorned, and destitute Meggy Swann goes to London, where she meets her father, an impoverished alchemist, and eventually discovers that although her legs are bent and weak, she has many other strengths.
EMC-Fiction
Dahlberg, Maurine F. Escape to West Berlin. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.
In 1961 East Berlin, thirteen-year-old Heidi copes with the stress of a crisis with her best friend, government pressure on her father to leave his West Berlin job, her mother's pregnancy, and the ever-present threat of the closing of the border with West Berlin.
EMC-Fiction
Davies, Jacqueline. Tricking the Tallyman: The Great Census Shenanigans of 1790. Knopf, 2009.
In 1790, the suspicious residents of a small Vermont town try to trick the man who has been sent to count their population for the first United States Census.
EMC-Picture Book
Davis, Tanita S. Mare’s War. Knopf, 2009.
Teens Octavia and Tali learn about strength, independence, and courage when they are forced to take a car trip with their grandmother, who tells about growing up Black in 1940s Alabama and serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the Women's Army Corps.
EMC-Fiction
Derby, Pat. Away to the Goldfields!. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004.
Yearning for adventure and tired of farm life in New Hampshire, sixteen-year-old Mary Margaret Malarkey journeys to California in 1848 to find her father who arrived earlier to make his fortune in the goldfields.
EMC-Fiction
Donnelly, Jennifer. Revolution. Delacorte Press, 2010.
An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy--Louis Charles, the lost king of France.
EMC-Fiction
Dowell, Frances O’Roark. Shooting the Moon . Atheneum, 2008.
When her brother is sent to fight in Vietnam, twelve-year-old Jamie begins to reconsider the army world that she has grown up in.
EMC-Fiction
Draper, Sharon M. Copper Sun. Atheneum, 2006.
Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.
EMC-Fiction
Duble, Kathleen Benner. Hearts of Iron. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2006.
In early 1800s Connecticut, fifteen-year-old Lucy tries to decide whether to marry her childhood friend who unhappily toils at the Mt. Riga iron furnace or the young man from Boston who has come to work in her father's store.
EMC-Fiction
Duman Tak, Bibi. Soldier Bear. Eerdmans, 2011.
An orphaned Syrian brown bear cub is adopted by Polish soldiers during World War II and serves for five years as their mischievous mascot in Iran and Italy. Based on a true story.
EMC - Fiction
Durrant, Lynda. My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier. Clarion Books, 2006.
Enjoying the freedom afforded her while dressing as a boy in order to earn higher pay after emigrating from Ireland, Jennie Hodgers serves in the 95th Illinois Infantry as Private Albert Cashier, a Union soldier in the American Civil War.
EMC-Fiction
Edwardson, Debby Dahl. My Name Is Not Easy. Cavendish, 2011.
Alaskans Luke, Chickie, Sonny, Donna, and Amiq relate their experiences in the early 1960s when they are forced to attend a Catholic boarding school where, despite different tribal affiliations, they come to find a sort of family and home.
EMC - Fiction
Erdrich, Louise. Game of Silence. HarperCollins, 2005.
Nine-year-old Omakayas, of the Ojibwa tribe, moves west with her family in 1849.
EMC-Fiction
Erdrich, Louise. The Porcupine Year. HarperCollins, 2008.
In 1852, forced by the United States government to leave their beloved Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker, fourteen-year-old Omokayas and her Ojibwe family travel in search of a new home.
EMC-Fiction
Ernst, Kathleen. Hearts of Stone. Dutton, 2006.
Orphaned when her father dies fighting for the Union and her mother expires from exhaustion, and also estranged from their Confederate neighbors, fifteen-year-old Hannah struggles to find a way for her family to survive during the Civil War in Tennessee.
EMC-Fiction
Farrell, Mary Cronk. Fire in the Hole! Clarion Books, 2004.
A claustrophobic boy dreams of going to college and becoming a newspaperman rather than a miner like his father, but when all union miners in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District are arrested, Mick develops new respect for his father while taking over responsibility for his family.
EMC-Fiction
Fern, Tracey E. Buffalo Music. Clarion, 2008.
After hunters kill off the buffalo around her Texas ranch, a woman begins raising orphan buffalo calves and eventually ships four members of her small herd to Yellowstone National Park, where they form the beginnings of newly thriving buffalo herds. Based on the true story of Mary Ann Goodnight and her husband Charles.
EMC-Fiction
Fletcher, Christine. Ten Cents a Dance. Macmillan, 2008.
In 1940s Chicago, fifteen-year-old Ruby hopes to escape poverty by becoming a taxi dancer in a nightclub, but the work has unforeseen dangers and hiding the truth from her family and friends becomes increasingly difficult. Published 2008.
EMC-Fiction
Fletcher, Susan. Alphabet of Dreams. Atheneum, 2006.
Fourteen-year-old Mitra, of royal Persian lineage, and her five-year-old brother Babak, whose dreams foretell the future, flee for their lives in the company of the magus Melchoir and two other Zoroastrian priests, traveling through Persia as they follow star signs leading to a newly-born king in Bethlehem. Includes historial notes. Mitra and her little brother, Babak, are beggars in the city of Rhagae, scratching out a living as best as they can with what they can beg for--or steal. But Mitra burns with hope and ambition, for she and Babak are not what they seem. They are of royal blood, but their father's ill-fated plot against the evil tyrant, King Phraates, has resulted in their father's death and their exile. Now disguised as a boy, Mitra has never given up believing they can rejoin what is left of their family and regain their rightful standing in the world. Then they discover that Babak has a strange gift: If he sleeps with an item belonging to someone, he can know that person's dreams. Mitra believes that they can use this gift to find passage back to the city of Palmyra and their remaining kinsmen. But soon Babak and his abilities come to the attention of a powerful Magus -- one who has read portents in the stars of the coming of a new king and the dawn of a new age. Soon Mitra and Babak find themselves on the road to Bethlehem.
EMC-Fiction
Frost, Helen. The Braid. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2006.
Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcibly evicted and separated with one sister accompanying their parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada, and the other staying behind with other family on the small island of Mingulay.
EMC-Fiction
Garland, Sherry. Buffalo Soldier. Pelican Pub. Co., 2006.
Realizing that his future lies in owning land, not just being free, a young man raised as a slave becomes a buffalo soldier--a member of an all-black cavalry regiment formed to protect white settlers from Indians, bandits, and outlaws, and that later fought in the Spanish American War.
EMC-Picture Books
Glass, Linzi Alex. Year the Gypsies Came. Holt, 2006.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, in the late 1960s, twelve-year-old Emily, who longs for affection from her quarreling parents, finds comfort in the stories of a Zulu servant and in her friendship with a young houseguest who has an equally troubled family.
EMC-Fiction
Gleitzman, Morris. Then. Henry Holt, 2010.
Felix and Zelda have escaped the train to the death camp, but where do they go now? They're two runaway kids in Nazi-occupied Poland. Danger lies at every turn of the road. With the help of a woman named Genia and their active imaginations, Felix and Zelda find a new home and begin to heal, forming a new family together.
EMC - Fiction
Golding, Julia. Diamond of Drury Lane. Roaring Brook Press, 2008.
Orphan Catherine "Cat" Royal, living at the Drury Lane Theater in 1790s London, tries to find the "diamond" supposedly hidden in the theater, which unmasks a treasonous political cartoonist, and involves her in the street gangs of Covent Garden and the world of nobility.
EMC-Fiction
Gratz, Alan. Samurai Shortstop. Dial Books, 2006.
While obtaining a Western education at a prestigious Japanese boarding school in 1890, sixteen-year-old Toyo also receives traditional samurai training which has profound effects on both his baseball game and his relationship with his father.
EMC-Fiction
Grifalconi, Ann. Ain’t Nobody a Stranger to Me. Jump at the Sun, 2007.
A man travels through the Underground Railroad, meeting people, both white and black, that help him on his way to find his granddaughter.
EMC-Picture Books
Hall, Bruce Edward. Henry and the Kite Dragon. Philomel Books, 2004.
In New York City in the 1920s, the children from Chinatown go after the children from Little Italy for throwing rocks at the beautiful kites Grandfather Chin makes, not realizing that they have a reason for doing so.
EMC-Picture Books
Hamley, Dennis. Ellen’s People Without Warning: Ellen’s Story 1914-1918. Candlewick Press, 2007.
An English working-class girl comes of age during World War I, as she witnesses the horrors of war and decides to become a nurse on the front lines.
EMC-Fiction
Harrington, Janice N. Going North. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2004.
A young African American girl and her family leave their home in Alabama and head for Lincoln, Nebraska, where they hope to escape segregation and find a better life. Published 2004.
EMC-Picture Books
Hearn, Julie. Minister’s Daughter. Atheneum, 2005.
In 1645 in England, the daughters of the town minister successfully accuse a local healer and her granddaughter of witchcraft to conceal an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but years later during the 1692 Salem trials their lie has unexpected repercussions.
EMC-Fiction
Hegamin, Tonya Cherie. Most Loved in All the World. Houghton Mifflin, 2009
Even though Mama is an agent on the Underground Railroad, in order to help others she must remain a slave, but she teaches her daughter the value of freedom through a gift of love and sacrfice.
EMC-Picture Books
Henson, Heather. That Book Woman. Atheneum, 2008.
A family living in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s gets books to read during the regular visits of the "Book Woman"--a librarian who rides a pack horse through the mountains, lending books to the isolated residents.
EMC-Picture Books
Hesse, Karen. Cats in Krasinski Square. Scholastic Press, 2004.
Two Jewish sisters, escapees of the infamous Warsaw ghetto, devise a plan to thwart an attempt by the Gestapo to intercept food bound for starving people behind the dark Wall.
EMC-Picture Books
Hilmo, Tess. With a Name Like Love. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011.
Thirteen-year-old Olivene Love gets tangled up in a murder mystery when her itinerant preaching family arrives in the small town of Binder, Arkansas in 1957.
EMC - Fiction
Hoffman, Alice. Incantation. Little Brown, 2006.
During the Spanish Inquisition, sixteen-year-old Estrella, brought up a Catholic, discovers her family's true Jewish identity, and when their secret is betrayed by Estrella's best friend, the consequences are tragic.
EMC-Fiction
Holm, Jennifer L. Turtle in Paradise. Random House, 2010.
In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.
EMC-Fiction
Holm, Jennifer L. Penny From Heaven. Random House, 2006.
As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death. It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in a car. Her Nonny cries every time her father's name is mentioned. And the two sides of her family aren't speaking to each other! Inspired by Newbery Honor winner Jennifer Holm's own Italian American family, Penny from Heaven is a shining story about the everyday and the extraordinary, about a time in America's history, not all that long ago, when being Italian meant that you were the enemy. But most of all, it's a story about families--about the things that tear them apart and bring them together. And Holm tells it with all the richness and the layers, the love and the laughter of a Sunday dinner at Nonny's. So pull up a chair and enjoy the feast! Buon appetito!
EMC-Fiction
Holm, Jennifer L. The Trouble with May Amelia. Atheneum Books, 2011.
Nineteenth century, frontier and pioneer life.
EMC - Fiction
Holub, Josef. Innocent Soldier. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2005.
A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer's own son.
EMC-Fiction
Hooper, Mary. Petals in the Ashes. Bloomsbury, 2004.
In 1666, Hannah and Sarah escape London, leaving behind plague and death as well as their sweets shop, and when it is safe, Hannah and her younger sister Anne return, only to face the city's Great Fire.
EMC-Fiction
Hopkinson, Deborah. Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale. Schwartz & Wade Books, 2008.
In Knob Creek, Kentucky, in 1816, seven-year-old Abe Lincoln falls into a creek and is rescued by his best friend, Austin Gollaher.
EMC-Fiction
Hopkinson, Deborah. Apples to Oregon: being the (slightly) true narrative of how a brave pioneer father brought apples, peaches, pears, plums, grapes, and cherries (and children) across the Plains. Atheneum Books, 2004.
A pioneer father transports his beloved fruit trees and his family to Oregon in the mid-nineteenth century. Based loosely on the life of Henderson Luelling.
EMC-Picture Books
Hopkinson, Deborah. Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building. Schwartz & Wade Books, 2006.
In 1931, a boy and his father watch as the world's tallest building, the Empire State Building, is constructed, step-by-step, near their Manhattan home.
EMC-Picture Books
Hughes, Pat. Breaker Boys. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2004.
In 1897, Nate Tanner, the hot-tempered twelve-year-old son of wealthy Pennsylvania mine owners, goes against his father's wishes by befriending some of the boys who work in the mines and gets caught up in a disasterous clash between mine workers and the law.
EMC-Fiction
Ibbotson, Eva. Dragonfly Pool. Dutton, 2008.
"At first Tally doesn't want to go to the boarding school called Delderton. But she soon discovers that it is a wonderful place where freedom and self expression are valued. Tally organizes a ragtag dance troupe so the school can participate in an international folk dancing festival in Bergania in the summer of 1939. There she befriends Karil, the crown prince, who would love nothing more than to have ordinary friends and attend a school like Delderton. When Karil's father is assassinated, it is up to Tally and her friends to help Karil escape the Nazis and the bleak future he has inherited".
EMC-Fiction
Ibbotson, Eva. Star of Kazan. Dutton, 2004.
After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.
EMC-Fiction
Jocelyn, Marthe. Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance. Candlewick Press, 2004.
In 1901, fourteen-year-old Mable Riley dreams of being a writer and having adventures while stuck in Perth County, Ontario, assisting her sister in teaching school and secretly becoming friends with a neighbor who holds scandalous opinions on women's rights.
EMC-Fiction
Johnson, Angela. Sweet Smell of Roses. Simon & Schuster, 2005.
A stirring yet jubilant glimpse of the youth involvement that played an invaluable role in the Civil Rights movement. There's a sweet, sweet smell in the air as two young girls sneak out of their house, down the street, and across town to where men and women are gathered, ready to march for freedom and justice. Inspired by the countless young people who took a stand against the forces of injustice, two Coretta Scott King Honorees, Angela Johnson and Eric Velasquez, offer a stirring yet jubilant glimpse of the youth involvement that played an invaluable role in the Civil Rights movement.
EMC-Picture Books
Kadohata, Cynthia. Kira-Kira. Atheneum, 2004.
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.
EMC-Fiction
Kadohata, Cynthia. Weedflower. Atheneum, 2004.
After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.
EMC-Fiction
Klages, Ellen. Green Glass Sea. Viking, 2006.
It is 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west on a train to live with her scientist father--but no one will tell her exactly where he is. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he's working on a top secret government program.
EMC-Fiction
LaFaye, Alexandria. Worth . Simon & Schuster, 2004.
After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse.
EMC-Fiction
Larson, Kirby. Hattie Big Sky. Delacorte Press, 2006.
After inheriting her uncle's homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe. Alone in the world, teen-aged Hattie is driven to prove up on her uncle's homesteading claim. For years, sixteen-year-old Hattie's been shuttled between relatives. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she courageously leaves Iowa to prove up on her late uncle's homestead claim near Vida, Montana. With a stubborn stick-to-itiveness, Hattie faces frost, drought and blizzards. Despite many hardships, Hattie forges ahead, sharing her adventures with her friends--especially Charlie, fighting in France--through letters and articles for her hometown paper. Her backbreaking quest for a home is lightened by her neighbors, the Muellers. But she feels threatened by pressure to be a "Loyal" American, forbidding friendships with folks of German descent. Despite everything, Hattie's determined to stay until a tragedy causes her to discover the true meaning of home.
EMC-Fiction
Lasky, Kathryn. Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven. Scholastic, 2004.
Princess Kazunomiya, half-sister of the Emperor of Japan, relates in her diary and in poems the confusing events occurring in the Imperial Palace in 1858, including political and romantic intrigue.
EMC-Fiction
Lawrence, Iain. B for Buster. Delacorte Press, 2004.
In the spring of 1943, sixteen-year-old Kak, desperate to escape his abusive parents, lies about his age to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.
EMC-Fiction
Lawrence, Iain. Giant-Slayer. Delacorte Press, 2009.
When her eight-year-old neighbor is stricken with polio in 1955, eleven-year-old Laurie discovers that there is power in her imagination as she weaves a story during her visits with him and other patients confined to iron lung machines.
EMC-Fiction
Lee, Milly. Landed. Farrar, Straus Girouix, 2006.
After leaving his village in southeastern China, twelve-year-old Sun is held at Angel Island, San Francisco, before being released to join his father, a merchant living in the area. Includes historical notes.
EMC-Picture Books
Lester, Julius. Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue. Hyperion, 2005.
Emma has taken care of the Butler children since Sarah and Frances's mother, Fanny, left. Emma wants to raise the girls to have good hearts, as a rift over slavery has ripped the Butler household apart. Now, to pay off debts, Pierce Butler wants to cash in his slave "assets", possibly including Emma.
EMC-Fiction
Lester, Julius. Guardian. Amistad/Harper, 2008.
In a rural southern town in 1946, a white man and his son witness the lynching of an innocent black man. Includes historical note on lynching.
EMC-Fiction
Levin, Ellen. Catch a Tiger by the Toe. Viking, 2005.
In the Bronx, New York, during the McCarthy era, twelve-year-old Jamie keeps a terrible secret about her family, but when the truth is exposed, her parents lose their jobs and she is fired from the school newspaper. Published 2005.
EMC-Fiction
Levine, Ellen. Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad. Scholastic Press, 2007.
A fictionalized account of how in 1849 a Virginia slave, Henry "Box" Brown, escapes to freedom by shipping himself in a wooden crate from Richmond to Philadelphia.
EMC-Picture Books
LeZotte, Ann Clare. T4: A Novel in Verse. Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
When the Nazi party takes control of Germany, thirteen-year-old Paula, who is deaf, finds her world-as-she-knows-it turned upside down, as she is taken into hiding to protect her from the new law nicknamed T4.
EMC-Fiction
Lisle, Janet Taylor. Black Duck. Sleuth/Philomel, 2006.
Years afterwards, Ruben Hart tells the story of how, in 1929 Newport, Rhode Island, his family and his best friend's family were caught up in the violent competition among groups trying to control the local rum-smuggling trade.
EMC-Fiction
Marisabina, Russo. I Will Come Back for You: A Family in Hiding during World War II. Schwartz & Wade Books, 2011.
A grandmother tells her granddaughter the story of the charm bracelet that represents her own childhood experiences while she and her family tried to evade the Nazis in Italy during World War II.
EMC - Picture Books
Meyer, L.A. Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady. Harcourt, 2004.
In 1803, after being exposed as a girl and forced to leave her ship, Jacky Faber finds herself attending school in Boston, where, instead of learning to be a lady, she battles her snobbish classmates, roams the city in search of adventure, and learns to ride a horse. Published 2004.
EMC-Fiction
McCully, Emily Arnold. Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom. Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2007.
Young Oney Judge risks everything to escape a life of slavery in the household of George and Martha Washington and to make her own way as a free black woman.
EMC-Picture Books
McCully, Emily Arnold. Squirrel and John Muir. Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2004.
In the early 1900s, a wild little girl nicknamed Squirrel meets John Muir, later to become a famous naturalist, when he arrives at her parents' hotel in Yosemite Valley seeking work and knowledge about the natural world.
EMC-Picture Books
McKernan, Victoria. Shackleton’s Stowaway. Random House, 2005.
A fictionalized account of the adventures of eighteen-year-old Perce Blackborow, who stowed away for the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic expedition and, after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, endured many hardships, including the loss of the toes of his left foot to frostbite, during the nearly two-year return journey across sea and ice.
EMC-Fiction
McKissack, Patricia. A Friendship for Today. Scholastic Press, 2007.
In 1954, when desegregation comes to Kirkland, Missouri, ten-year-old Rosemary faces many changes and challenges at school and at home as her parents separate.
EMC-Fiction
McKissack, Patricia. Never Forgotten. Schwartz & Wade Books, 2011.
In eighteenth-century West Africa, a boy raised by his blacksmith father and the Mother Elements--Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth--is captured and taken to America as a slave.
EMC - Picture Books
McMullan, Margaret. How I Found the Strong. Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Frank Russell, known as Shanks, wishes he could have gone with his father and brother to fight for Mississippi and the Confederacy, but his experiences with the war and his changing relationship with the family slave, Buck, change his thinking.
EMC-Fiction
Mitchell, David. Black Swan Green. Random House, 2006.
A single year of 13-year-old Jason Taylor’s life in Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.
EMC-Fiction
Morgan, Nicola. Fleshmarket. Delacorte Press, 2004.
In nineteenth-century Scotland, following the death of his mother during surgery, Robbie decides to take revenge on the surgeon who performed the operation, Dr. Robert Knox, and in the process, makes a gruesome discovery about the lengths the medical profession will go to advance its knowledge of anatomy.
EMC-Fiction
Morpurgo, Michael. Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips. Scholastic Press, 2006.
When Boowie reads the diary that his grandmother sends him, he learns of her childhood in World War II England when American and British soldiers practiced for D-Day's invasion in the area of her home, and about her beloved cat, Adolphus Tip, and the cat's namesake.
EMC-Fiction
Morpurgo, Michael. Private Peaceful. Scholastic Press, 2004.
When Thomas Peaceful's older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself.
EMC-Fiction
Moses, Shelia P. Legend of Buddy Bush. McElderry Books, 2004.
In 1947, twelve-year-old Pattie Mae is sustained by her dreams of escaping Rich Square, North Carolina, and moving to Harlem when her Uncle Buddy is arrested for attempted rape of a white woman and her grandfather is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.
EMC-Fiction
Murphy, Jim. Desperate Journey. Scholastic Press, 2006.
In the mid-1800s, with both her father and her uncle in jail on an assault charge, Maggie, her brother, and her ailing mother rush their barge along the Erie Canal to deliver their heavy cargo or lose everything.
EMC-Fiction
Murphy, Pat. Wild Girls. Viking, 2007.
When thirteen-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods, and after winning a writing contest together they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.
EMC-Fiction
Mwangi, Meja. Mzungu Boy. House of Anansi Press, 2005.
For Kariuki, life in his small Kenyan village is one great adventure. It gets even more interesting when he meets Nigel, an English boy who is visiting his grandfather. Kariuki befriends Nigel even though the rest of the villagers fear him and call him "the mzungu boy."
EMC-Fiction
Naidoo, Beverley. Burn My Heart. Amistad, 2009.
Two boys--one white, one black--share an uneasy friendship in Kenya in the 1950s, a country shaken by a rebellion of Africans against white landowners, but suspicions and accusations are escalating, and an act of betrayal could change everything.
EMC-Fiction
Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. Wendy Lamb Books, 2009.
Fourteen-year-old Calogero Scalise and his Sicilian uncles and cousin live in small-town Louisiana in 1898, when Jim Crow laws rule and anti-immigration sentiment is strong, so despite his attempts to be polite and to follow American customs, disaster dogs his family at every turn.
EMC-Fiction
Nuzum, K.A. The Leanin’ Dog. Joana Cotler Books, 2008.
In wintry Colorado during the 1930s, eleven-year-old Dessa Dean mourns the death of her beloved mother, but the arrival of an injured dog and the friendship they form is just what they need to change their lives forever.
EMC-Fiction
Paterson, Katherine. Bread and Roses, Too. Clarion Books, 2006.
Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
EMC-Fiction
Paulsen, Gary. Quilt. Wendy Lamb Books, 2004.
During World War II, while his father is in Europe fighting and his mother is working in Chicago, a five-year-old boy goes to live with his grandmother in a rural Norwegian American community in Minnesota.
EMC-Fiction
Paulsen, Gary. Woods Runner. Turtleback Books, 2011.
From his 1776 Pennsylvania homestead, thirteen-year-old Samuel, who is a highly-skilled woodsman, sets out toward New York City to rescue his parents from the band of British soldiers and Indians who kidnapped them after slaughtering most of their community. Includes historical notes at the end of each chapter.
EMC Fiction
Peck, Richard. Teacher’s Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts. Dial Books, 2004.
In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean, old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies." "If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has been nothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacher has passed on, they'll shut the school down entirely and leave him free to roam. No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead of him, led by a teacher he never could have predicted--perhaps the only teacher equipped to control the likes of him: his sister Tansy. Despite stolen supplies, a privy fire, and more than any classroom's share of snakes, Tansy will manage to keep that school alive and maybe, just maybe, set her brother on a new, wiser course. As he did in A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder , Richard Peck creates a whole world of folksy, one-of-a-kind characters here--the enviable and the laughable, the adorably meek and the deliciously terrifying. There will be no forgetting Russell, Tansy, and all the rest who populate this hilarious, shrewd, and thoroughly enchanting novel.
EMC-Fiction
Peet, Mal. Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion and Betrayal. Candlewick Press, 2007.
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.
EMC-Fiction
Phelan, Matt. Storm in the Barn. Candlewick Press, 2009.
In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary challenges: local bullies, his father's failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness. Certainly a case of "dust dementia" would explain who (or what) Jack has glimpsed in the Talbot's abandoned barn - a sinister figure with a face like rain. In a land where it never rains, it's hard to trust what you see with your own eyes, and harder still to take heart and be a hero when the time comes.
EMC-Fiction
Philbrick, W.R. The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg. Blue Sky Press, 2009.
Twelve-year-old Homer, a poor but clever orphan, has extraordinary adventures after running away from his evil uncle to rescue his brother, who has been sold into service in the Civil War.
EMC-Fiction
Pinkney, Andrea. Bird in a Box. Little, Brown, 2011.
In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome.
EMC - Fiction
Ramsey, Calvin Alexander. Ruth and the Green Book. Carolrhoda Books, 2010.
When Ruth and her parents take a motor trip from Chicago to Alabama to visit her grandma, they rely on a pamphlet called "The Negro Motorist Green Book" to find places that will serve them. Includes facts about "The Green Book."
EMC-Picture Books
Raven, Margot Theis. Circle Unbroken: The Story of a Basket and Its People. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.
A grandmother tells the tale of Gullahs and their beautiful sweetgrass baskets that keep their African heritage alive.
EMC-Picture Books
Raven, Margot Theis. Night Boat to Freedom. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006.
At the request of his fellow slave Granny Judith, Christmas John risks his life to take runaways across a river from Kentucky to Ohio. Based on slave narratives recorded in the 1930s.
EMC-Picture Books
Rodman, Mary Ann. Yankee Girl. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.
When her FBI-agent father is transferred to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, eleven-year-old Alice wants to be popular but also wants to reach out to the one black girl in her class in a newly-integrated school.
EMC-Fiction
Roy, Jennifer. Yellow Star. Cavendish, 2006.
From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation.
EMC-Fiction
Russell, Ching, Yeung. Tofu Quilt. Lee & Lowe Books, 2009.
Growing up in 1960s Hong Kong, a young girl dreams of becoming a writer in spite of conventional limits placed on her by society and family.
EMC-Fiction
Saenz, Benjamin Alire. Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood. Cinco Puntos Press, 2004.
As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of "gringo" racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.
EMC-Fiction
Salisbury, Graham. Eyes of the Emperor. Wendy Lamb Books, 2005.
Following orders from the United States Army, several young Japanese American men train K-9 units to hunt Asians during World War II.
EMC-Fiction
Salisbury, Graham. House of the Red Fish. Wendy Lamb Books, 2006.
Over a year after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the arrest of Tomi's father and grandfather, Tomi and his friends, battling anti-Japanese-American sentiment in Hawaii, try to find a way to salvage his father's sunken fishing boat. 1943, one year after the end of Under the Blood-Red Sun, Tomi's Papa and Grandpa are still under arrest, and the paradise of Hawaii now lives in fear-waiting for another attack, while trying to recover from Pearl Harbor. As a Japanese American, Tomi and his family have new enemies everywhere, vigilantes who suspect all Japanese. Tomi finds hope in his goal of raising Papa's fishing boat, sunk in the canal by the Army on the day of the attack. To Tomi, raising Papa's boat is a sign of faith that Papa and Grandpa will return. It's an impossible task, but Tomi is determined. For just as he now has new enemies, his struggle to raise the boat brings unexpected allies and friends.
EMC-Fiction
Schmidt, Gary D. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. Clarion Books, 2004.
In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner's--want to change into a tourist spot.
EMC-Fiction
Schmidt, Gary D. Wednesday Wars. Clarion Books, 2007.
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.
EMC-Fiction
Sedgwick, Marcus. Foreshadowing. Wendy Lamb Books, 2006.
Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.
EMC-Fiction
Selvadurai, Shyam. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea.
Although life for Amrith in 1980 Sri Lanka seems rather uneventful and orderly, things change in a hurry when his male cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith finds himself completely enamored with his new visitor. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life before, when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed. Shyam Selvadurai's brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In this, his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor, and compassion. Published 2005.
EMC-Fiction
Senzai, N.H. Shooting Kabul. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Escaping from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, eleven-year-old Fadi and his family immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Fadi schemes to return to the Pakistani refugee camp where his little sister was accidentally left behind.
Sheth, Kashmira. Keeping Corner. Hyperion Books, 2009.
In India in the 1940's, thirteen-year-old Leela's happy, spoiled childhood ends when her husband since age nine, whom she barely knows, dies, leaving her a widow whose only hope of happiness could come from Mahatma Ghandi's social and political reforms.
EMC-Fiction
Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. Wendy Lamb Books, 2009.
As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1970s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.
EMC-Fiction
Stolz, Joelle. Shadows of Ghadames. Delacorte Press, 2004.
At the end of the nineteenth century in Libya, eleven-year-old Malika simultaneously enjoys and feels constricted by the narrow world of women, but an injured stranger enters her home and disrupts the traditional order of things.
EMC-Fiction
Sturtevant, Katherine. True and Faithful Narrative. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
In London in the 1680s, Meg--now sixteen years old--tries to decide whether to marry either of the two men who court her, taking into account both love and her writing ambitions.
EMC-Fiction
Tai, Amy-Lee. Place A Place Where Sunflowers Grow. Children's Book Press, 2006.
While she and her family are interned at Topaz Relocation Center during World War II, Mari gradually adjusts as she enrolls in an art class, makes a friend, plants sunflowers and waits for them to grow.
EMC-Picture Books
Tavares, Matt. Mudball. Candlewick Press, 2005.
During a rainy Minneapolis Millers baseball game in 1903, Little Andy Oyler has the chance to become a hero by hitting the shortest and muddiest home run in history.
EMC-Picture Books
Thompson, Kate. Highway Robbery. Greenwillow Books, 2009.
On a cold day in eightheenth-century England, a poor young boy agrees to watch a stranger's fine horse for a golden guinea but soon finds himself in a difficult situation when the king's guard appears and wants to use him as bait in their pursuit of a notorious highwayman.
EMC-Fiction
Thor, Annika. A Faraway Island. Delacorte Press, 2009.
In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait for their parents to join them in fleeing the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.
EMC-Fiction
Thor, Annika. The Lily Pond. Delacorte Press, 2011.
A year after Stephie Steiner and her younger sister, Nellie, left Nazi-occupied Vienna, Stephie has finally adapted to life on the rugged Swedish island where she now lives. But more change awaits Stephie: her foster parents have allowed her to enroll in school on the mainland, in Goteberg. Stephie is eager to go. Not only will she be pursuing her studies, she'll be living in a cultured city again—under the same roof as Sven, the son of the lodgers who rented her foster parents' cottage for the summer.
EMC - Fiction
Tingle, Rebecca. Far Traveler. G. Putnam's Sons, 2005.
After the death of her mother, Aethelflaed of Mercia, seventeen-year-old Aelfwyn flees imprisonment by her uncle King Edward and, in the guise of a youthful bard, plays her part in the resolution of the tangled political enmities of tenth century Britain.
EMC-Fiction
Tocher, Timothy. Chief Sunrise, John McGraw, and Me. Cricket Books, 2004.
In 1919, fifteen-year-old Hank escapes an abusive father and goes looking for a chance to become a baseball player, accompanied by a man who calls himself Chief Sunrise and claims to be a full-blooded Seminole. Published 2004.
EMC-Fiction
Uhlberg, Myron. Dad, Jackie and Me. Peachtree, 2005.
In Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, a boy learns about discrimination and tolerance as he and his deaf father share their enthusiasm over baseball and the Dodgers' first baseman, Jackie Robinson. Published 2005.
EMC-Picture Books
Walter, Mildred Pitts. Alec’s Primer. University Press of New England, 2004.
A young slave's journey to freedom begins when a plantation owner's granddaughter teaches him how to read. Based on the childhood of Alec Turner (1845-1923) who escaped from slavery by joining the Union Army during the Civil War and later became a landowner in Vermont.
EMC-Picture Books
Weatherford, Carole Boston. Dear Mr. Rosenwald. Scholastic Press, 2006.
Young Ovella rejoices as her community comes together to raise money and build a much-needed school in the 1920s, with matching funds from the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company and support from Professor James of the Normal School.
EMC-Picture Books
Weaver, Will. Full Service. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
In the summer of 1965, teenager Paul Sutton, a northern Minnesota farm boy, takes a job at a gas station in town, where his strict religious upbringing is challenged by new people and experiences.
EMC-Fiction
Wells, Rosemary. Red Moon at Sharpsburg. Viking, 2007.
As the Civil War breaks out, India, a young Southern girl, summons her sharp intelligence and the courage she didn't know she had to survive the war that threatens to destroy her family, her Virginia home, and the only life she has ever known.
EMC-Fiction
Williams-Garica, Rita. One Crazy Summer. Amistad, 2010.
In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.
EMC-Fiction
Winter, Jonah. Steel Town. Atheneum Books, 2008.
In Steel Town, it's always raining, freight trains come and go, the big furnace roars, and the steel mill never sleeps.
EMC-Picture Books
Winthrop, Elizabeth. Counting on Grace. Wendy Lamb Books, 2006.
It's 1910 in Pownal, Vermont. At 12 Grace and her best friend Arthur must go to work in the mill, helping their mothers work the looms. Together Grace and Arthur write a secret letter to the Child Labor Board about underage children working in the mill. A few weeks later, Lewis Hine, a famous reformer arrives undercover to gather evidence. Grace meets him and appears in some of his photographs, changing her life forever.
EMC-Fiction
Wolf, Allan. The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic. Candlewick Press, 2011.
EMC-Fiction
Woodruff, Elvira. Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O’Hara. Knopf, 2006.
Darcy Heart O'Hara, a young Irish girl who neglects her chores to observe the beauties of nature and everyday life, shares "family memories" with her homesick parents and siblings after the O'Haras are forced to emigrate to America in the 1840s.
EMC-Picture Books
Woodson, Jacqueline. Feathers. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2007.
When a new, white student nicknamed "The Jesus Boy" joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie's growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.
EMC-Fiction
Wynne-Jones, Tim. Rex Zero and the End of the World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
In the summer of 1962 with everyone nervous about a possible nuclear war, ten-nearly-eleven-year-old Rex, having just moved to Ottawa from Vancouver with his parents and five siblings, faces his own personal challenges as he discovers new friends and a new understanding of the world around him.
EMC-Fiction
Yancey, Richard. The Monstrumologist: William James Henry. Simon & Schuster, 2009.
In 1888, twelve-year-old Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with Dr. Warthrop, a scientist who hunts and studies real-life monsters, as they discover and attempt to destroy a pod of Anthropophagi.
EMC-Fiction
Yelchin, Eugene. Breaking Stalin's Nose. Holt, 2011.
In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.
EMC - Fiction
Yolen, Jane. Prince Across the Water. Philomel Books, 2004.
In 1746, a year after the Scottish clans have rallied to the call of their exiled prince, Charles Stuart, to take up arms against England's tyranny, fourteen-year-old, epileptic Duncan MacDonald and his cousin, Ewan, run away to join the fight at Culloden and discover the harsh reality of war.
EMC-Fiction
Zee, Ruth Vander. Mississippi Morning. Eerdmans, 2004.
Amidst the economic depression and the racial tension of the 1930s, a boy discovers a horrible secret of his father's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. It was 1933 and life was good for James William. Piece by piece, however, his comfortable life begins to unravel. First he learns that the burning of a black man's house was not accidental. Then his fishing buddy LeRoy tells him about the hanging tree and the Klan. Though he accepts that blacks and whites can't drink from the same fountains because "that's the way it is," James William can't believe that racial hatred exists in his own community until he comes face to face with a Klan member. A thought-provoking story of one boy's loss of naivete in the face of harsh historical realities, Mississippi Morning will challenge young readers to question their own assumptions and confront personal decisions.
EMC-Picture Books
Websites
Database of Award Winning Children’s Literature
Use the “genre” category to obtain a list of award winning historical novels for children and young adults.
http://www.dawcl.com/search.asp
Historical Fiction for Children
This resource is organized by time, place and appropriate reading level.
http://bookgirl3.tripod.com/historicalfiction.html
HistoricalNovels.info
Over 5,000 historical novels listed by time and place.
www.historicalnovels.info
Library Book Lists: Historical Fiction for Children
This is a large collection of links to other resources pertaining to historical fiction.
http://librarybooklists.org/fiction/children/jhistorical.htm
