Historical Fiction genre
After his anthropologist father disappears from the Gobi desert while tracing Marco Polo’s ancient route from Venice to China, 11-year-old Mark suffers an asthma attack. To distract the boy, Doc Hornaday tells Mark the tale of Marco Polo. Marco’s journey bolsters Mark’s courage and whets his appetite for risk and adventure. Illustrations.
Ama is a slave. She is old and dying and has an incredible story to tell. It is about violence and heartaches, but it is also a story of courage, hope, determination and ultimately, love. Since Ama is blind, she cannot write down her story for future generations. Instead, she summons the son from whom she has been long separated. at first he thinks she’s old and tiresome. But as Ama’s astonishing journey unfolds in her own words, his world changes forever, until he can never see it with the same eyes again. Nor will those who read Ama’s story.
Sol and Lisa are two children aboard the St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish passangers escaping Europe to save their lives.
The St. Louis, a luxury ocean liner, leaves Germany in 1939, taking its almost one thousand passangers to a safe haven across the ocean. They will be making a fresh start in countries like Cuba and the United States, away from the Nazi regime that is trying to destroy them.
Lisa and her family have a large cabin in first class, while Sol and his parents are below in tourist class. They don’t know each other, but they share a mix of feelings: excitement to be crossing the ocean, hope for the future, and sadness at leaving everything they know behind.
Sol and Lisa’s optimism is threatened when the ship is not allowed to dock in Cuba. What the children don’t know is that their chance for refuge is in jeopardy and a darker future might lie ahead for the jewish passangers on board.
Guan Yu, an ancient Chinese warrior, fights side by side with his blood brothers Liu Bei and Zhang Fei to squash the menacing Yellow Scarves. He defends his country and his honor, but his troubles are just beginning. All over China, opponents post grave challenges, each one more trying than the last. Will Guan Yu prevail against the forces that threaten him? Or will the obstacles prove too much for even the brave warrior?
Far off the coast of California looms a harsh rock known as the island of San Nicholas. Dolphins flash in the blue waters around it, sea otter play in the vast kep beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches.
Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother, constantly guard against the Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply.
More than this, it is an adventure of the spirit that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down. Karana’s quiet courage, her Indian self-reliance and acceptance of fate, transform what to many would have been a devastating ordeal into an uplifting experience.
The girl known only as Brat has no family, no home, and no future until she meets Jane the Midwife and becomes her apprentice. As she helps the sharp-tempered Jane deliver babies, Brat–who renames herself Alyce–gains knowledge, confidence, and the courage to want something from life: “A full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.” Medieval village life makes a lively backdrop for the funny, poignant story of how Alyce gets what she wants. A concluding note discusses midwifery past and present. A Newbery Medal book.
What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice–two city slickers from Chicago–make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel’s seemingly sleepy Illinois town?August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn’t resting easy.August 1930: The Cowgilll boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back with a dead mouse and a bottle of milk.August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma to trespass, pinch property, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry–all in one day.And there’s more–much more–as Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma’s, each one funnier and more surprising than the year before. In the grand storytelling tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannelly O’Connor, Richard Peck has created a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining. And year round, you are sure to enjoy your stay with them.
A story filled with danger and excitement, “Johnny Tremain” tells of the turbulent, passionate times in Boston just before the Revolutionary War. Johnny, a young apprentice silversmith, is caught up in a dramatic involvement with Otis, Hancock, and John and Samuel Adams in the exciting currents and undercurrents that were to lead to the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington–and finally, a touching resolution of Johnny’s personal life. “Johnny Tremain” is historical fiction at its best, portraying Revolutionary Boston as a living drama, through the shrewd eyes of an observant boy.
When Nazis invade, what can kids do to fight them? World War II has taken its toll on the French countryside. German soldiers patrol the towns, searching for any challenge to their rule. The Tessier siblings, Paul, Marie, and Sophie, keep their noses clean and their faces blank as the French military police tighten their grip on their small country town. But all three are secretly doing their part for the Resistance: the men and women working hard to undermine the Germans and win back France’s freedom . . . even if it ends up costing them their lives.
In 1936 Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern, considered Jewish despite a non-religious upbringing, learns to box from the legendary Max Schmeling while struggling with the realities of the Holocaust.