Historical Fiction

Authors, Various:  Scholastic Publishing

My Name is America series : Dear America series : Royal Diaries series

Alphin, Elaine - Ghost Soldier.

Alexander, in North Carolina while his father decides whether to remarry and move there, meets the ghost of a Confederate soldier and helps him look for his family. 

Auch, Mary Jane – Journey to Nowhere.

In 1815, while traveling by covered wagon to settle in the wilderness of western New York, eleven-year-old Mem experiences a flood and separation from her family.  Sequel:  Frozen Summer.

Ayres, Katherine – North by Night:  A Story of the Underground Railroad.

Presents the journal of a sixteen-year-old girl whose family operates a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Blos, Joan – A Gathering of Days:  A New England Girl’s Journal:  1830 -32.

The journal of a 14-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father's remarriage, and the death of her best friend.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson - The Secret Garden. 

Ten-year-old Mary comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors and discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.

Carbone, Elisa Lynn - Blood on the River:  James Town 1607.

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.

Collier, James Lincoln – My Brother Sam is Dead.

Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral in a Tory town.

Cushman, Karen – Midwife’s Apprentice.

In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.

DeFelice., Cynthia - Weasel.

Alone in the frontier wilderness in the winter of 1839 while his father is recovering from an injury, eleven-year-old Nathan runs afoul of the renegade killer known as Weasel and makes a surprising discovery about the concept of revenge.

DeJong, Meindert - The Wheel on the School.

The residents of a small town in Holland try to bring storks to nest in their village.

Fleischman, Sid – Whipping Boy.                                                                                   A bratty prince and his whipping boy have many adventures when they inadvertently trade places after becoming involved with dangerous outlaws.

Giff, Patricia Riley – Lily’s Crossing                                                                          During a summer spent at Rockaway Beach in 1944, Lily's friendship with a young Hungarian refugee causes her to see the war and her own world differently.

Harlow, Joan Hiatt - Thunder from the Sea.

Just when his dreams of being part of a family and having a dog seem to be coming true, Tom wonders if trouble with neighbors on his new island home and the impending birth of a new baby will change everything. Set in Newfoundland in 1929.

Hermes, Patricia – On Winter’s Wind.

As she struggles to make ends meet, eleven-year-old Genevieve faces the possibility of turning in a fugitive slave for the bounty.

Hill, Kirkpatrick – Minuk : Ashes in the Pathway. – Girls of Many Lands series

Twelve-year-old Minuk's traditional Eskimo way of life is changed forever in 1892 with the arrival of Christian missionaries.

Holm, Jennifer – Our Only May Amelia.

As the only girl in a Finnish American family of seven brothers, May Amelia Jackson resents being expected to act like a lady while growing up in Washington state in 1899.

Hostetter, Joyce Moyer - Blue.

Ann Fay Honeycutt becomes the man of the house at age thirteen after her father leaves to fight in World War II, forcing Ann to give up her childhood and tend to her family, but when a polio epidemic strikes, Ann faces the most devastating challenge of her life.

Kadohata, Cynthia – Kira-Kira.

Kira-Kira 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.

Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie – Lumber Camp Library.

Ruby wants to be a teacher, but after her father's death in a logging accident she must quit school to care for her ten brothers and sisters, until a chance meeting with a lonely old blind woman transforms her life.

MacLachlan, Patricia – Sarah, Plain and Tall.

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

Mazer, Harry - A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor - Series.

To honor his father who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, seventeen-year-old Adam eagerly enlists in the Marines in 1944, survives boot camp, and faces combat on the tiny island of Okinawa.

McSwigan, Marie - Snow Treasure.

In 1940, when the Nazi invasion of Norway reaches their village in the far north, twelve-year-old Peter and his friends use their sleds to transport nine million dollars worth of gold bullion past the German soldiers to the secret harbor where Peter's uncle keeps his ship ready to take the gold for safekeeping in the United States.

Mukerji, Dhan Gopal – Gay-Neck:  The Story of a Pigeon. 

The story of the training of a carrier pigeon and its service during the First World War, revealing the bird's courageous and spirited adventures over the housetops of an Indian village, in the Himalayan Mountains, and on the French battlefield.

O’Dell, Scott - Zia.

A young Indian girl, Zia, caught between the traditional world of her mother and the present world of the Mission, is helped by her aunt Karana whose story was told in the Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Park, Linda Sue – A Single Shard.

Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge near a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.

Pearsall, Shelley – Trouble Don’t Last.

Samuel, an eleven-year-old Kentucky slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad.

Peck, Richard – A Long Way from Chicago.

A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.  Sequel:  A Year Down Yonder.

Rinaldi, Ann – A Break with Charity:  a Story about the Salem Witch Trials.

While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.

Ryan, Pam Munoz – Esperanza Rising.

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

Selznick, Brian - The Invention of Hugo Cabret Caldecott Award, 2008

When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

Speare, Elizabeth George – The Witch of Blackbird Pond.                                                              In 1687 in Connecticut, Kit Tyler, feeling out of place in the Puritan household of her aunt, befriends an old woman considered a witch by the community and suddenly finds herself standing trial for witchcraft.

Taylor, Mildred – Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Book one in the series.

An African-American family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.

Van Leeuwen, Jean – Cabin on Trouble Creek.

In 1803 in Ohio, two young brothers are left to finish the log cabin and guard the land while their father goes back to Pennsylvania to fetch their mother and younger siblings.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls – Little House on the Prairie.

A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, dig a well, and fight a prairie fire.