Historical Fiction genre
Craig Moodie’s adventure novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Finn, who stows away to search for his lost father and brothers. It’s a journey that brings storms, shipwreck, tense encounters with the inhabitants of an unexplored continent — and a coming of age for Finn, who will in the end, face his father as a young man and a Viking.
Thembi’s beloved great-grandmother, Gogo, is so old, she hasn’t left the house in years. But when Thembi’s parents announce that black South Africans will be allowed to vote for the first time, Gogo surprises the whole family by announcing that she will travel to the polls and that Thembi must come with her. Through Thembi’s eyes, readers experience every detail of this momentous day.
Nine-year-old Helen is confused by the disappearance of her Jewish friend during the German occupation of Paris.
In 1907, sixteen-year-old Julia Hamilton, happy to accompany her diplomat father on a tour of the Ottoman-controlled cities of Istambul, Damascus, Palmyra, and Aleppo, soon finds the journey increasingly hazardous as she begins to uncover her father’s true mission and the secret motivations of the other travelers in their group.
In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the horror of the battles in France. But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey’s courage touches the soldiers around him and he is able to find warmth and hope. But his heart aches for Albert, the farmer’s son he left behind. Will he ever see his true master again?
It’s the year 1095, and fifteen-year-old Anna longs for a different life in her small German village. But as the seasons turn, the year proves anything but ordinary. Her beloved youngest cousin disappears, and another cousin, Martin, runs away to join a murderous army of renegade Crusaders. When Anna risks everything to rescue Leah, an orphaned Jewish girl whose only connection to her former life is a silver cup, the two girls forge a friendship that defies the intolerance of their time. Filling her story with fascinating period details, debut novelist Constance Leeds paints a rich, colorful picture of an eleventh-century life marked by courage, will, and most of all-hope.Winner of the 2008 IRA Children’s and Young Adult Book Award in the Intermediate Fiction Category.
Hachi, an Akita pup, reveres his master and likes nothing more than accompanying Japanese professor Eizaburo Ueno to his morning train and then meeting him in the afternoon. One day the professor dies while at work, yet the faithful Hachi awaits his return at the station every day until his own death some 10 years later. Newman’s fictionalized account of this true story adds a young boy, Yasuo, who befriends the dog and the professor and later cares for Hachi during his steadfast vigil at the Shibuya train station in Japan.
Tom O’Connor, a poor, adventurous boy lives with his mother and half sister at a tavern on the island of Nevis in 1639. He rescues a slave from drowning, learns he is prince, loses him, travels the Southern Hemisphere in search of him, and finally brings him home to Cape Verde, hoping for a grand reward. But by the time Tom discovers that the prince is really a fisherman’s son, the loss of reward doesn’t matter-his adventures have brought him no use for greed, and as he says, “a reckless regard for other people’s life and well-being.”
Since the fall of Troy, Myrina has built the Moon Riders into a strong and potent band of warrior women. But the son of Achilles is bent on revenge, and the Moon Riders are displaced from their home and fighting for their lives. Plagued with slavery, storms, shipwreck, and strife, the Moon Riders must accept help from outsiders for their very survival. Only trust in the strong bonds of their friendship will help Myrina, Iphigenia, and Cassandra vanquish their enemies and welcome those who may help them achieve a more peaceful way of life.
Dutiful nurse, hospital matron, courageous resistance fighter, Edith Cavell was all of these. A British citizen, the forty-eight-year-old Cavell was matron of an institute for nurses in the suburbs of Brussels at the outbreak of World War I. Dedicated to the methods of Florence Nightingale, her intelligence and ferocious sense of duty had transformed the institute into a leading training center.When the Germans captured Belgium in the fall of 1914, an organization was formed to assist British and French soldiers trapped behind German lines. Edith was asked to help and she didn’t hesitate. From that moment forward, Edith sheltered escaping soldiers in her hospital, using trickery to keep the suspicious Germans from discovering them. She helped arrange a secret route to neutral Holland and back to England at great personal risk, enabling soldiers of all ranks to slip through German lines. Using the institute as part of an elaborate Allied escape route, Edith Cavell was responsible for one thousand soldiers eventually making their way home.But Cavell’s role was discovered and a German military court put her on trial in Brussels, where she was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. On October 12, 1915, she put on her nurse’s uniform and met her fate, immediately becoming a worldwide martyr and rallying point for the British in their war against Germany.