Historical Fiction genre
Meet Decimus Rex, who has been kidnapped by slave-takers and taken to an arena in Rome. Decimus is intent on escaping from captivity, and knows he must outshine his fellow slaves and endure the trials set before him: crossing burning coals, hammers, spikes, and hand-to-hand combat. He never gives up his hope of escape . . . if he only knew that this is just the beginning of his troubles.
Combining simple, economical prose with a profound awareness of the hardships that life sometimes brings to young people, Linda Sue Park has crafted a suspenseful, accessible novel that goes beyond newspaper headlines to illuminate human experience. Includes an afterword from the author and one from Salva Dut. A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about a girl in Sudan in 2008 and a boy in Sudan in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours’ walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the “lost boys” of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2
When seventeen-year-old Harry Fogg undertakes a race against time to win a wager with a member of his famous father’s club, he puts to good use the recklessness and fascination with all things mechanical that have caused him trouble in Victorian England.
Master storyteller K. M. Grant brings the dramatic saga of young love and religious conflict to a satisfying end in the final book of the Perfect Fire trilogy. As winter falls upon the Occitan, Raimon must find a way to recover the Blue Flame from the hands of the evil White Wolf. But his plan could lead him back to the pyre—and he might not be so lucky to escape from it again. Meanwhile, Yolanda—unwillingly married to Sir Hugh des Arcis—is threatened by her husband’s desire for a son. As Sir Hugh sets off on a mission to claim the Occitain for France, she makes her own journey through the blizzard to find Raimon, a journey that could end in disaster. As the flames rise one last time, Raimon and Yolanda’s fates, like the fates of the Flame and the Occitan itself, hang by a smoky thread.
When Prince Rodolfo’s monsters attack her, Petra Kronos is spirited away to London. As she struggles to escape, Neel and Tomik sail the high seas, in search of her. Though separated by many miles, the three friends draw closer together in this sequel to The Cabinet of Wonders, called “astonishingly accomplished” by Publishers Weekly.
Torn from their homeland, two Jewish sisters find refuge in Sweden. It’s the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellieare sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden. Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She’s happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who’s as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parentsand whether she will ever see them again. From the Hardcover edition.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2
It is March of 1940. The French believe that their army can protect them from Nazi Germany. But is Paris a safe place for Jews? Gustavers”s parents donrs”t think so. Forced to leave behind his best friend, the mischievous Marcel, and his cousin Jean-Paul, Gustave moves with his mother and father to Saint-Georges, a small village in the countryside. During April and May, Nazi Germany invades one country after another. In June, the French army is defeated, and Paris is occupied. Saint-Georges is still part of the free zone, but the situation there is becoming increasingly precarious. Then Gustave meets Nicole, a Catholic girl who works for the French Resistance. Along with her father, Nicole tries to find a way to smuggle Jean-Paul, Marcel, and their families into Free France so that they can all escape to America. It is Gustave, however, who comes up with a plan that just might work. But going into Occupied France is a risky thing to do when you are Jewish. Inspired by her fatherrs”s experiences as a Jewish child living in France during World War II, Susan Lynn Meyer tells the story of a familyrs”s day-to-day struggles in a country that may not be able to keep its promise of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 1
In ancient China, two boys forge an unlikely alliance in an effort to become expert archers and, ultimately, to save their city from invading barbarians.
In seventeenth-century China, orphaned ShaoShu, who can squeeze into small spaces, puts his life in danger when he becomes a spy for a young band of warrior monks known as the Five Ancestors and bravely infiltrates evil Tonglong’s camp.
Kino lives on a farm on the side of a mountain in Japan. His friend, Jiya, lives in a fishing village below. Everyone, including Kino and Jiya, has heard of the big wave. No one suspects it will wipe out the whole village and Jiya’s family, too. As Jiya struggles to overcome his sorrow, he understands it is in the presence of danger that one learns to be brave, and to appreciate how wonderful life can be.The famous story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave destruction of his family and village.