Historical Fiction genre
Mouschi the cat relates the experiences of Anne Frank and seven other people who hid in from Nazis in a secret annex over a factory in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. Includes facts about the Holocaust and about Anne Frank.
When a young woman with tears in her eyes throws a gold ring into the wind in 1830, the ring settles in a meadow, and there it stays as the seasons pass — and then the years. But the ring’s journey is just beginning, and as more years go by, it moves at the mercy of the natural world: caught in the hoof of a young deer and flung across a meadow, tilled into the field of an unknowing farmer, dropped from the mouth of a magpie into the sea where countless tides wash over it. Will the ring, inscribed with the words love never dies, end its journey at the bottom of the ocean? Or does it have a greater destiny? Ever the master of weaving exquisite stories from the most unexpected threads, Bob Graham gives readers yet another collection of quiet moments that together form a transcendent, heartfelt tale.
In nineteenth-century England, after her father’s disappearance Nan Sparrow, ten, works as a “climbing boy,” aiding chimney sweeps, but when her most treasured possessions end up in a fireplace, she unwittingly creates a golem.
Shy twelve-year-old Nisha, forced to flee her home with her Hindu family during the 1947 partition of India, tries to find her voice and make sense of the world falling apart around her by writing to her deceased Muslim mother in the pages of her diary.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XII, Issue 2 and Volume XI, Issue 3.
Life is becoming dangerous for the Jews of Krakow in 1936 with incidents of violence and persecution increasing day by day. Twelve-year-old Anna begs her father to leave Poland, but he is reluctant to give up his position as an acclaimed clarinetist in the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra. After barely escaping from an attack by a group of violent thugs, it becomes clear that the family must leave. Anna’s father auditions for the famous Bronislaw Huberman, a world renowned violinist, who is searching for Jewish musicians to play in a new orchestra in Palestine. This poignant story is based on real events in pre-war Poland and Palestine. After saving 700 Jews and their families, Bronislaw Huberman went on to establish what later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1970 Vancouver, thirteen-year-old Charlotte and her best friend, Dawn, are keen to avoid the pitfalls of adolescence. Couldn’t they just skip teenhood altogether, along with its annoying behaviors – showing off just because you have a boyfriend, obsessing about marriage and a ring and matching dining-room furniture? Couldn’t one just learn about life from Jane Austen and spend the days eating breakfast at noon, watching “People in Conflict,” and thrift-store shopping for cool castoffs to tie-dye for the upcoming outdoor hippie music festival? But life becomes more complicated when the girls meet a Texan draft dodger who comes to live with Charlotte’s Quaker family. Tom Ed expands Charlotte’s horizons as they discuss everything from war to civil disobedience to women’s liberation. Grappling with exhilarating and disturbing new ideas, faced with a censorship challenge to her beloved English teacher and trying to decode the charismatic draft dodger himself, Charlotte finds it harder and harder to stick to her unteen philosophy, and to see eye to eye with Dawn.
Leira is about to start her initiation as a priestess when her world is turned upside down. A violent earthquake leaves her home – and her family – in pieces. And the earth goddess hasn’t finished with the island yet. With her family, Leira flees across the sea to Crete, expecting sanctuary. But a volcanic eruption throws the entire world into darkness. After the resulting tsunami, society descends into chaos; the status and privilege of being noble-born are reduced to nothing. With her injured mother and elderly nurse, Leira must find the strength and resourcefulness within herself to find safety.
On April 1, 1945 with the battle of Okinawa beginning, fourteen-year-old native Okinawan Hideki, drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps, is handed two grenades and told to go kill American soldiers; small for his age Hideki does not really want to kill anyone, he just wants to find his family, and his struggle across the island will finally bring him face-to-face with Ray, a marine in his very first battle and the choice he makes then will change his life forever.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XI, Issue 2.
In 1932, twelve-year-old Cal must stop being a hobo with his father and go to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, where he begins learning about his history and heritage as a Creek Indian.
“Saying goodbye to Scotland is the hardest thing Jenna MacDuff has had to do– until she met Lord Pembroke. Jenna’s small clan has risked their lives traveling the countryside as masons, secretly drumming up support and arms for the exiled King James Stuart to retake the British throne. But their next job brings them into enemy territory: England. Jenna’s father repeatedly warns her to trust no one, but when the Duke of Keswick hires the clan to build a garrison on his family estate, it seems she cannot hide her capable mind from the duke’s inquisitive son, Lord Alex Pembroke. Nor her growing attraction to him. When he begins to return those forbidden feelings, she finds that she’s thrust into a precarious position– keeping her newfound friendship to the duke’s son a secret from her father, while concealing her father’s treason from an increasingly attendant Lord Pembroke. But there’s a covert plan behind the building of the garrison. Will Jenna decide to keep her family’s mutinous secrets and assist her clan’s cause? Or protect the you man she’s falling for and keep him safe? No matter which she chooses, someone will pay a deadly price”–Jacket.