Historical Fiction

Historical Fiction genre

The Big Wave

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.

Dragon

Long, the dragon-style warrior, saw his temple burned, his brothers killed, and his novice siblings fleeing to the four winds. But that was many months ago. Now the five young warriors have reunited with Ying, the redeemed renegade who put all of these events in motion, and ShaoShu, the mousy street thief, to prevent the wily mantis Tonglong from taking over China. Time is short and distances are great, and the future of China lies in the hands of five young monks.

Five Ancestors #6: Mouse (5 Ancestors)

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.

Smiler’s Bones

Provides the story of an Eskimo boy who, after being brought from his home in Greenland to New York City by explorer Robert Peary, was forced to deal with the death of his father, and the loss of everything familiar to him.

The Eagle’s Shadow

In 1946, while her emotionally distant father is in occupied Japan, a twelve-year-old girl spends a year with her mother’s relatives in a Tlingit Indian village in Alaska and begins to love and respect her heritage as she confronts the secret of her mother’s disappearance.

Shi-Shi-Etko

Shi-shi-etko, a Native American girl, spends the last four days before she goes to residential school learning valuable lessons from her mother, father, and grandmother, and creating precious memories of home.

Return to Hawk’s Hill

Running away from a vicious trapper, seven-year-old Ben MacDonald is separated from his family and eventually ends up on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, where he is taken in by a tribe of Metis Indians.

 

Tuk And The Whale

During the early 1600s, there was an active whaling industry in Canada. Whale oil was used to light the streets and buildings of European cities and to manufacture leather, wool, and soap. The baleen was used to make everything from carriage springs to corsets. Told from the point of view of a young Inuit boy named Tuk, this story imagines what might have happened if the people of Tuk’s Baffin Island winter camp had encountered European whalers, blown far from their usual whaling route. Both the hunters and the whalers prize the bowhead whale for different reasons. Together, they set out on a hunt, though they are all on new and uncertain ground. Scrupulously researched and vetted, this early chapter book inspires discussion about communication between two groups of people with entirely different world views, early whaling practices, and a productive partnership that also foreshadows serious problems to come. Simply and beautifully told, Tuk and the Whale includes a glossary, historical note, and recommendations for further reading.