Genre: Historical Fiction

Historical Fiction genre

The Plant Hunters

By Book Importer | Published: May 11, 2012

Driven by an all-consuming passion, the plant hunters traveled around the world, facing challenges at every turn: tropical illnesses, extreme terrain, and dangerous animals.  They battled piranhas, tigers, and vampire bats.  Even the plants themselves could be lethal!  But these intrepid eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers were determined to find and collect new and unusual [...]

Other Descriptors: Intermediate (ages 9-14), International, Realistic Fiction, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Themes: , , , , , , » Leave a comment

The Crossing

By Book Importer | Published: May 11, 2012

This young, lyrical picture book reveals the adventure and natural wonders that Lewis & Clark encountered on their Western expedition in the early 1800s. Told from the point of view of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the baby on Sacagawea’s back, this story offers a fresh perspective of a young country and gives voice to a character [...]

Other Descriptors: Americas, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Primary (ages 6-9), United States of America » Themes: , , , , , , , » Leave a comment

Puppet

By Book Importer | Published: April 17, 2012

A heartbreaking episode in history, explained through the story of a young servant girl in the late 1800s. The year is 1882. A young servant girl named Esther disappears from a small Hungarian village. Several Jewish men from the village of Tisza Eszvar face the ‘blood libel’ — the centuries-old calumny that Jews murder Christian [...]

Other Descriptors: Hungary, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Themes: , , , » Leave a comment

The Wild Book

By Book Importer | Published: April 16, 2012

Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them? But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank [...]

Other Descriptors: Cuba, Intermediate (ages 9-14), Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Themes: , , , , , , » Leave a comment

Horton Halfpott

By Book Importer | Published: April 12, 2012

Tom Angleberger’s latest, loopiest middle-grade novel begins when M’Lady Luggertuck loosens her corset (it’s never been loosened before!), thereby setting off a chain of events in which all the strict rules of Smugwick Manor are abandoned. When, as a result of “the Loosening,” the precious family heirloom, the Luggertuck Lump (quite literally a lump), goes [...]

Other Descriptors: England (UK), Intermediate (ages 9-14), Mystery » Themes: , , , , » Leave a comment

Breaking Stalin’s Nose

By Book Importer | Published: April 12, 2012

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.

Other Descriptors: Intermediate (ages 9-14), Russia » Themes: , , , , » Leave a comment

Ghost Hands

By Book Importer | Published: April 12, 2012

Auki, a young member of the Tehuelche tribe in Patagonia, wants to prove himself as a hunter but when he sets out on his own to face the puma, he stumbles upon a sacred cave and its guardian.

Other Descriptors: Argentina, Latin America, Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9) » Themes: , , , , , , » Leave a comment

David

By Book Importer | Published: April 10, 2012

An eighteen-year-old stonecutter who is caught in the middle of political conflict in Florence, Italy, in the early 1500s, must flee for his life in disguise because his has become the best-known face and figure in Florence.

Other Descriptors: Europe, Italy, Young Adult (ages 14-18) » Themes: , , , , » Leave a comment

My Family for the War

By Book Importer | Published: April 10, 2012

Before the start of World War II, ten-year-old Ziska Mangold, who has Jewish ancestors but has been raised as a Protestant, is taken out of Nazi Germany on one of the Kindertransport trains, to live in London with a Jewish family, where she learns about Judaism and endures the hardships of war while attempting to [...]

Other Descriptors: England (UK), Europe, Germany, Intermediate (ages 9-14) » Themes: , , , , , , » Leave a comment

A Boy Called Dickens

By Book Importer | Published: April 3, 2012

For years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child’s dreams don’t come true . . . As a child, Dickens was forced to live on his own and work long hours [...]

Other Descriptors: England (UK), Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9) » Themes: , , , , , , , , » Leave a comment