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After the War Was Over
In this charming book, Michael Foreman describes growing up in post-World War II England and preparing to be an artist. His text, watercolors, and illustrated memorabilia evoke innocence and pleasure in a world recovering from war.
| Author: Foreman, Michael |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Anne Frank
If you wonder why read another book on Anne Frank, look at this beautifully and realistically illustrated story that simply relates the political situation and gives the characters more three-dimensional personalities. A chronology in the end papers adds
| Author: Poole, Josephine |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Anne Frank
If you wonder why read another book on Anne Frank, look at this beautifully and realistically illustrated story that simply relates the political situation and gives the characters more three-dimensional personalities. A chronology in the end papers adds
| Author: Poole, Josephine |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Armageddon Summer
Fourteen-year-old Marina and 16-year-old Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers, to the top of a mountain to await the end of the world. The book is narrated in three "voices"--Marina, Jed, and objective accounts such as the newspaper
| Author: Yolen, Jane & Coville, Bruce |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Ashanti to Zulu
Each letter of this alphabet book describes a different African culture. It is meant as a reference or resource book, but the fabulous illustrations create a lively African world.
| Author: Musgrove, Margaret |
|
At Her Majesty's Request
Queen Victoria oversees the education and upbringing of an African princess after she was rescued from execution by a ship captain who brought her to England.
| Author: Myers, Walter Den |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Bee & Jacky
A brother and sister suffer the effects of their father's Vietnam trauma and their mother's ineffectualness by resuming a physical relationship. This moving, psychologically honest book is difficult to read because the real or imagined incest is portraye
Black Star, Bright Dawn
Bright Dawn, a teenaged Eskimo girl, takes her father's place in the grueling Iditarod, the 1000-mile dogsled race through the cold wilds of Alaska. In the process, she learns about herself, her family, and her culture.
Breadwinner, The
This coming-of-age story, told from the point of view of a young Afghan girl left to fend for her family in the times of repressive Taliban influence is both moving and suspenseful.
| Author: Ellis, Deborah |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Breadwinner, The
This coming-of-age story, told from the point of view of a young Afghan girl left to fend for her family in the times of repressive Taliban influence is both moving and suspenseful.
| Author: Ellis, Deborah |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Bucking the Sarge
Teenage Luther, who is exploited by his slumlord mother, keeps his equilbrium through many humorous misadventures before finding his own way.
| Author: Curtis, Christopher Paul |
|
Buried Alive
This collection of linked poems explores the rich, puzzling and painful experiences of love from teenagers' points of view.
| Author: Fletcher, Ralph |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page
Tobias, an 11-year-old boy, goes to serve as a page for a year in his uncle's castle in 13th Century England. Notes for the Reader contains additional historical information.
| Author: Platt, Richard |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies | language arts - writing
|
Color of My Words, The
This is an easy-reading novel, part poetry and part prose, about Ana Rosa, a young writer who is growing up poor in a seaside village in the Dominican Republic where she learns about family community, the merengue, and the power of words.
| Author: Joseph, Lynn |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Dogsong
14-year-old Russel, an Eskimo, feels assailed by the modernity of his life. With the help of a wise elder, Russel learns how (and why) to make a 1400-mile dog run across his country. (Newbery Honor Book)
| Author: Paulsen, Gary |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Edna St. Vincent Millay
This beautifully illustrated collection of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay includes an introductory biography and an index of the poems.
| Author: Schoonmaker, Frances (ed.) |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Elijah of Buxton
Eleven-year-old Elijah, the first to be born free in a Canadian settlement for runaway slaves at the end of the Underground Railroad, though considered "fra-gile" and talkative by adults, performs an heroic feat with his chucking stones.
| Author: Curtis, Christopher Paul |
|
Ellen Foster
11-year-old Ellen tells her own story in this "Oprah Book about a foster childhood." She is an amazingly resilient child and an amazingly perceptive observer of others.
Escaping into the Night
Thirteen year old Halina escapes from a Polish ghetto to a forest community of Jews where she and her friends Batya and Reuven learn to survive despite brutality, extreme hardship, and loss of family. Although this book is fiction, there were real commu
| Author: Friedman, D. Dina |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Facing the Lion
Enhanced by a few, vivid color photos, this memoir recounts the Maasi childhood and first encounters with European and American culture of an American teacher who spends part of each year working in Kenya. An afterword brings the reader up to date with L
| Author: Lekuton, Joseph |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Fever 1793
This is a very compelling fictionalization of life for one teenaged girl, her family, and her friends during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793.
| Author: Anderson, Laurie Halse |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
First Part Last, The
[revised from dust jacket] Bobby is a classic urban teenaged boy-- impulsive, eager, restless. On his 16th birthday, he learns that his girlfriend Nia is pregnant. Their lives change dramatically, both during the pregnancy and after baby Feather is born.
Fish
The story of the difficult and dangerous journey a family must make out of a country hit with drought and civil unrest. The story is told from the point of view of the family's youngest member who decides to take a live fish on the journey.
| Author: Matthews, L. S. |
HSE Descriptors:
literature and arts | social studies
|
Francie
This engaging novel shows a slice of life in small-town Alabama in the 1940s, as told from the perspective of 13-year-old Francie. Francie, her mother, and her brother anxiously await a chance to join her father in Chicago. In the meantime, Francie comes
Giver, The
This Newbery Award-winning novel is set in a utopian community in which all conflict and social problems are unheard of. After a coming-of-age ceremony, Jonas begins to interact with The Giver and learns about the secrets that underlie his perfect world.
Growing Up in Revolution and the New Nation
"Studying history is a way of snooping into the past." So begins this interesting book that focuses on childhood and adolescence in 1775--1800. Illustrated with paintings from the Revolutionary War period, the book describes education, work and leisure, d
| Author: Miller, Brandon Marie |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Heart is Big Enough, The
Each of these five stories focuses on a protagonist with special challenges who is approaching adolescence. As author Steven Kellogg notes on the dust jacket, these stories "bring illumination and enjoyment to those of us who have already passed through"
Holes
This story-within-a-story tells of Stanley Yelnats (and his distant relatives, one of whom "cursed" the family), mistakenly sent to a juvenile corrections camp in Texas. At the corrections camp, Stanley finds a real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of
I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly
Patsy, a 12-year-old slave girl, keeps a diary during 1865, describing the changes in the plantation that come with the Emancipation Proclamation. The author appends historical notes, archival photographs, the wording of Constitutional Amendments 13,14,
| Author: Hansen, Joyce |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Islander, The
An orphaned boy, who grows up with his grandfather on an island off the coast of British Columbia, finds a key-literally--that helps him overcome his loneliness and loss.
Jack
This is a biography of JFK, from birth through HS graduation. A bit of his parents' backgrounds is also provided. Primary documents, letters and school reports, are sprinkled throughout the text.
| Author: Cooper, Ilene |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Jayhawker
With the U.S. on the verge of civil war, Elijah Tully and his father ride out of Kansas as Jayhawkers, guerrilla fighters against slavery. After his father is killed, Lije goes undercover among the proslavery bushwhackers to help the abolitionists and t
| Author: Beatty, Patricia |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Jim the Boy
In a coming-of-age story set in Appalachia, Jim grows up as a town boy with his mother and uncles but finally makes friends with a mountain boy and meets his mountain grandfather.
Journey
Journey, an eleven-year-old boy whose Mom has left him and his sister to live with her parents, feels angry and betrayed. He spends the summer looking at family photos, learning to recognize the sustaining love of his grandparents, and letting go of his
| Author: MacLachlan, Patricia |
|
Leaving and Other Stories, The
The nine short stories in this collection all feature young people on the brink of adulthood. Although themes vary according to story, most are written as reminiscences. Since the author is Canadian, readers will learn about Canadian culture.
Light in the Forest, The
At 15, true son John Butler is returned to his biological white family by his Native American adoptive father. After he escapes with his friend and rescuer Halt Arrow, he is caught between two families and two cultures.
| Author: Richter, Conrad |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies | language arts - reading
|
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
This coming-of-age novel is a Newbery Honor Book. It tells the story of people in Maine in the early 1900s, a friendship between a minister's son and an island girl, and the ways greed and prejudice change all their lives.
Long Way From Chicago, A
Subtitled "A Novel in Stories," this is a book about Joey and Mary Alice, who leave their home in Chicago each summer during the Depression to spend a week with Grandma Dowdel, who lives in a very small downstate town and who is, to say the least, an unfo
Long Way Gone, A: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
The story of a Sierra Leonian boy who at age 12 was recruited and forced into being a gun toting, drug crazed soldier and then learned how to live with what he had done after going through a UNICEF rehabilitation program.
| Author: Beah, Ishmael |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Love, Loss, and What I Wore
The author reminisces indirectly by depicting and describing outfits she wore at times of loss in her life. This clever book has a limited audience: urban (especially New York), women, and people interested in fashion design.
Lugalbanda
This retelling of the oldest recorded story ever found from Sumer (now Iraq) recounts the journey of a young prince as he crosses the mountains to join a war and find his brothers, overcoming obstacles on his way. The book includes interesting historical
| Author: Henderson, Kathy |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Moon Over Tennessee
A boy accompanies his father into the Confederate Army in the Civil War, eventually arriving at the battle of Gettysburg. The story-poem is told in a format of journal entries. Somber black and white woodcuts contribute to the tragic tone. A map and an
| Author: Crist-Evans, Craig |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Morning Girl
In alternating chapters, Morning Girl (age 12) and her brother describe life on a Bahamian island in 1492. (Note: this book won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.)
| Author: Dorris, Michael |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Moving Mama to Town
Enterprising Freddy James moves his mother and younger brother to town after his father leaves and the farm fails. He works at the local saloon where he learns from everyone he meets.
| Author: Young, Ronder Thomas |
|
Night the Bells Rang, The
This short novel (76 pages), told from the point of view of a farm boy, tells the story of Mason's struggles with a bully, and of his growing up. Although the book has the feel of a reminiscence, the emotions are complex and the characters ring true.
| Author: Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie |
|
Persepolis 2
This graphic novel sequel to Persepolis, depicts the author's rebellious adolescence and early adulthood among dissident outsider friends in Vienna and her voluntary return to her family in fundamentalist Tehran. Readers should be cautioned about referen
| Author: Satrapi, Marjane |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Persepolis I: The Story of a Childhood
In this first of two volumes about the author's life, Satrapi tells of her childhood and coming of age in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran/Iraq war.
| Author: Satrapi, Marjane |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies | language arts - writing
|
Poetry for Young People: Edna St. Vincent Millay
Beautifully illustrated collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry. The volume also includes a sketch of the poet's life.
| Author: Francis Schoonmaker |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Raft, The
A city boy spends a magical summer in the woods with an unusual grandmother and discovers not only the creatures of the woods and river but himself as well. This is a beautifully illustrated portrait of a childhood we all might like to claim.
Remember the Bridge
Illustrated by prints and black-and-white photographs and bracketed by two "bridge" poems, the poetry relates the experience of African Americans from Africa to the Civil Rights Movement.
| Author: Weatherford, Carole |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Rite of Passage
The book is set in Harlem in the late 1940s. Protagonist Johnny Gibbs, 15, is a model child and student until he learns that he is a foster child who must go to live with another family. Johnny feels betrayed and reacts by running away. What follows pu
| Author: Wright, Richard |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Same Stuff as Stars, The
Angel and her little brother Bernie are dropped off at their great-grandma's house. Dad is in jail, and mom is an alcoholic and selfishly unable to be a mother. Together, the new family learns to live together in the crumbling Vermont farmhouse.
| Author: Paterson, Katherine |
|
Saying It Out Loud
Mindy is a typical 16-year-old teenager when her mother develops a serious medical problem. This touching story alternates between Mindy's current feelings and actions and flashbacks to earlier memories to show her reaction to this terrible tragedy.
Secret Life of Bees, The
Fourteen-year-old Lily and Rosaleen, the black servant who has look after her since her mother died 10 years earlier, run from Lily's abusive father and the brutality and racism of the police. Against the historical events of 1964 in South Carolina, they
Seek
For a senior class autobiography assignment, Robbie creates "a sound portrait" in a radio script format, which includes his extended family and his search for his long-absent father. One reviewer thought that the text is too disjointed and confusing for
Sees Behind Trees
A blind Native American boy learns to "see behind trees", guided by his mother, to use his other senses. He uses his gift to help an old warrior find a land of mystery and beauty that he'd discovered years ago, and could not find again himself.
| Author: Dorris, Michael |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies
|
Seventeenth Child, The
The author writes the oral history of her mother, who is the seventeenth child in her family growing up in the South during the Depression.
| Author: Rice, Dorothy & Payne, Lucille |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
shadow spinner
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| Author: fletcher, susan |
HSE Descriptors:
literature and arts | literature and arts | literature and arts | literature and arts | literature and arts
|
Song of Be
When Be was a child, she and her mother left their people--the Namibian Bushmen--to work on a white man's plantation. Spending time with her grandfather helps her forget how much she misses others. With Namibia on the verge of freedom, Be finds the cour
| Author: Beake, Lesley |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Sound the Jubilee
During the Civil War, Maddie, an eleven-year-old house slave, journeys with her mistress to Nags Head near Roanoke Island which has become a Yankee-protected community for run-away slaves. Maddie grows up there with her family and finds a place for herse
| Author: Forrester, Saundra |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Speak
This compelling story recounts Melinda's freshman year in high school. She is an outcast because she called the police to an end-of-the-summer party. Her reasons for doing this and her gradual emotional acceptance and psychological healing are the focus o
Step Toward Heaven, A
When Young Ju emigrates with her immediate family to America from Korea, she misses her grandparents. As she grows older, she finds a refuge from her father's physical abuse in school achievement. The author mimics the style of narration with the age of
Stone Water
Grant, a 15-year-old boy, grapples with his grandfather's request to remove him from life support systems. This is a realistic and emotionally riveting portrayal of issues surrounding death.
Tale of Paradise Lost, The
An exquisitly illustrated prose retelling of John Milton's famous poem Paradise Lost.
| Author: Willard, Nancy |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
To Kill A Mockingbird
In this classic American novel set in the 30s, Lee tells the story of two children growing up in the South with their lawyer father who represents an African-American man accused of raping a white woman. The novel is rich and complex in plot and theme.
| Author: Lee, Harper |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Toning the Sweep
Emily goes to the desert with her mother to help her dying grandmother Ola pack up her house and move. She slowly comes to terms with her family history and her coming loss.
Touching Spirit Bear
Cole, a juvenile "delinquent," is offered jail or "circle justice," a system based on Native American traditions that attempts to provide healing for the criminal, his victim, and the community. Cole's time at a remote Alaskan island and his interactions
Waiting for the Evening Star
This beautifully illustrated book is about Berty, a small boy who lives a happy life in a Vermont farming community. Berty's life changes when his older brother, Luke, decides to leave the family farm to become a soldier in WWI.
| Author: Wells, Rosemary |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963, The
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family from Flint, Michigan are drastically changed after a trip to Alabama in 1963. This is a powerful book, sometimes powerfully funny and sometimes powerfully touching
| Author: Curtis, Christopher P. |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March
Tells the story of the Birmingham Children's March through four participants. As the events unfold, the different perspectives and motivations of the participants shed light on the dynamics of the civil rights movement. In addition to the personal stori
| Author: Levinson, Cynthia |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies
|
Words West: Voices of Young Pioneers
Diary and journal excerpts and archival photographs enliven a well-written text about the Westward Movement as seen from the perspective of children. The book includes short biographies of the children who are quoted often as well as a chronology, furthe
| Author: Wadsworth, Ginger |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Year Down Yonder, A
This is the sequel to A Long Way From Chicago. Both books have won awards, the Newbery Medal for this one. Mary Alice goes to live with her spunky, trouble-making grandma in rural Illinois because the Depression has torn her family apart.
Young Man and the Sea, The
In an attempt to push his father out of the alcohol-fueled funk he's been in since his wife died, 12-year-old Skiff Beaman repairs the family fishing boat and meets a 900-lb. tuna 30 miles at sea.
| Author: Philbrick, Rodman |
|
Young Man and the Sea, The
In an attempt to push his father out of the alcohol-fueled funk he's been in since his wife died, 12-year-old Skiff Beaman repairs the family fishing boat and meets a 900-lb. tuna 30 miles at sea.
| Author: Philbrick, Rodman |
|
Young Teddy Roosevelt
A biography of the life of Theodore Roosevelt up to the time of his presidency has illustrations that are as interesting as the well-written text.
| Author: Harness, Cheryl |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
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