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All Around Town
Columbia, South Carolina of the 1920's and 1930's is chronicled by photographs by Richard Roberts and text by the author. One reader thought the text was too childish.
Anastasia's Album
This biography of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, is told through photos and memorabilia and reveals the mystery behind her death.
| Author: Brewster, Hugh |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary
This nonfiction reference book is filled with photographs and details about Anne Frank, her family, and the world in which she lived.
| Author: Verhoeven, Rian & van der Rol, Ruud |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Barack Obama, Son of Promise, Child of Hope
Framed by the story of an African American mother and her son, who keeps interjecting questions and comments, the narrative tells the story of Barack Obama around the theme of hope and the importance of education. Both the words of Nikki Grimes and the ar
| Author: Grimes, Nikki |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies
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Before I Was Your Mother
A mother tells her daughter stories about herself before she became a mother who does many things.
Brothers War, The: Civil War Voices in Verse
Well-known poet J. Patrick Lewis includes archival photographs and factual information to expand the emotional of his poems that give voice to individuals who were caught up in the Civil War. The book also includes a map, a timeline, a bibliography, and
| Author: Lewis, J. Patrick |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea
This well illustrated book of poetry uses the metaphor of nurturing tea for the extended family.
| Author: Thomas, Joyce Carol |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
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Charlotte
When 10-year-old Charlotte's father forbids her to associate with her cousins because her uncle was a royalist in the American Revolution, she disobeys with lifelong consequences. The book includes an Afterword about Charlotte's later life.
| Author: Lunn, Janet |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream
Almanac information and family history are given for each month in sections called Dates and Festivals, Farmer's Calendar, Worth Knowing, and Worth Cooking.
E. E. Cummings
This extensive biography of the American poet and artist, E. E. Cummings, also conveys the history of the times, especially of artistic movements. Drawings, archival photographs, and segments of poems expand the biographical information.
| Author: Reef, Catherine |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
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From Miss Ida's Porch
People from the street gather on Miss Ida's porch to hear stories, especially stories about important Black musicians (Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Marian Anderson) and their personal connections to them. These I-remember-when stories are both heartfelt a
| Author: Belton, Sandra |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Going Back Home: An Artist Returns to the South
This book is a partnership between African American artist, Michele Woods, who returned to the South and painted her family history, and author Toyomi Igus, who gave words to Woods's paintings.
| Author: Igus, Toyomi |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies
|
Good Brother, Bad Brother
Subtitled "The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth," this long biography portrays their lives before and after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. This is a GED level book.
| Author: Giblin, James Cross |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Grandmother and the Runaway Shadow
When she was a young girl, Grandmother immigrated to America from Russia accompanied by her shadow. Together, they made a new home.
| Author: Rosenberg, Liz |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Grandmothers
In the introduction, the editor, after describing her own strong grandmother, says that grandmothers help us make the transition from childhood to adulthood and "civilize" us. The essays, poems and short stories that follow introduce us to a wide cultura
| Author: Giovanni, Nikki (Ed.) |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Great Stone Face, The
The author retells a famous Hawthorne story about how a New England village interprets a mountain's "face" over the years as fulfilling the prophecy of revealing the noblest person of the time.
| Author: Schmidt, Gary/Hawthorne Nathaniel |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
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Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
Bessie was 103 and Sadie was 105 when they collaborated with Amy Hill Hearth to write this story of their lives and times. Additionally the Delany sisters offer their perspectives on society, living conditions, people, events, etc. from the past century.
| Author: Delany, Sarah & Delany, A. Elizabeth |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
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
Home Place
While on a hike, a family discovers the site of a ruined house. They find a few abandoned objects and, through terse and poetic words, imagine the family who once lived there. Through superior illustrations Pinkney evokes a world that is part dream and
| Author: Dragonwagon, Cresent |
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How I Discovered Poetry
Marilyn Nelson describes her childhood in America in the 1950s, as the daughter of an African American Army officer. The poems span from her fourth to fourteenth year and touch aspects of civil rights, "Red Scare," atom bomb and the stirrings of the femin
| Author: Nelson, Marilyn |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies | language arts - writing
|
I Have an Olive Tree
Colorful, stylized illustrations depict a girl and her mother as they travel back to Greece to see the olive tree her granfather left her when he died, a gift that grows in value as the story progresses.
| Author: Bunting, Eve |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
I Have Heard of a Land
A hardworking African American woman stakes a homestead claim in the Oklahoma Territory in the period after the Civil War. Told in rich, lyrical language, the beautifully illustrated story reminds us that African Americans were a part of the settlement o
| Author: Thomas, Joyce Carol |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
In Coal Country
Living in a small Ohio mining town, a small girl tells of her family's life in the first part of this century.
| Author: Hendershot, Judith |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
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 |
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Life Is So Good
This is the autobiography of George Dawson, grandson of slaves, who began to learn to read at age 98. Like Having Our Say, this book offers an African American perspective to 100 years of history. Moreover, Dawson's character and philosophy for l
| Author: Dawson, George & Glaubman, Richard |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - writing | social studies
|
Lost: A Story in String
Using string figures, a grandmother tells a story of the uses of imagination and resourcefulness. Beautiful black-and-white clayboard and ink illustrations and clear diagrams and resources encourage readers to try the string figures.
Lotus Seed, The
A young girl tells her grandmother's story of carrying a lotus seed with her from Vietnam, losing it, and then regaining it. The author wants to share "how a family's heritage is passed from one generation to the next and how hope, like the lotus seed, ca
| Author: Garland, Sherry |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Miss Rumphius
The Lupine Lady, the great-aunt of the narrator, travels around the world but returns to Maine to plant lupines and make her world a better place.
| Author: Cooney, Barbara |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Momma, Where Are You From?
When a young girl asks her mother where she comes from, she receives a loving description of her hard-working childhood in the segregated South told in rich, rhythmic language with lush illustrations.
| Author: Bradby, Marie |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
My Grandmother's Journey
The narrator tells the story of the grandmother's life and of the many wars and troubles she experienced in Eastern Europe, until she came to the U.S.
| Author: Cech, John |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
My Great Aunt Arizona
Based on the author's great aunt, Arizona was born in a log cabin. All her life she dreamed of visiting far-away places. She became a teacher and never left the area, but taught several generations of children to share her dreams.
| Author: Houston, Gloria |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Once On This Island
Twelve-year-old Mary and her older brother and sister tend the family farm on Michigan's Mackinac Island while their father is away fighting the British in the War of 1812.
| Author: Whelan, Gloria |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | social studies
|
Other Side, The
Spurred by a letter from her grandmother saying that "they're pulling Shorter down," the poet returns to the people and places of her childhood in Shorter, Alabama. The poems are accessible and concise but filled with powerful feeling. Photographs from
Out of the Dump: Writings and Photogrpahs by Children from Guatemala
Approximately 1500 people, most children, live in a dump at the center of Guatemala City. In 1991 Nancy McGirr began a photography project with about 2 dozen children. She provided cameras; the children photographed their world. In 1993 Kris Franklin bega
| Author: Franklin, Kristine, & McGirr, Nancy (Eds.) |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Relatively Speaking
Centered around a family reunion, a boy speaks about his older brother, his parents, grandparents, and extended family in short, easily accessible free verse.
Rio Grande Stories
In Albuquerque, 7th grade students decide to write a book on their diverse heritage to raise money for the school. As they research traditions and family stories, they learn unexpected things about themselves. Chapters alternate between stories about th
Seven Brave Women
A young girl recounts her family history passed down to her through stories and family artifacts of remarkable, ordinary women. Each of the seven women who lived at the time of a war "made history by not fighting in wars."
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
|
Show Way
Simple text and stunning illustrations tell the intergenerational story of Woodson's ancestors.
| Author: Woodson, Jacqueline |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
So Far From the Sea
A Japanese American visits Manazar, a Japanese relocation camp in World War II, to visit the grave of a grandfather.
| Author: Bunting, Eve |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Soul Looks Back in Wonder, The
This lavishly illustrated book is a collection of 13 poems by African American poets such as Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Alexis de Veaux.
| Author: Feelings, Tom |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading
|
Stitches: A Memoir
An autobiographical graphic novel that profoundly describes the author's disturbing and often horrific childhood. This is a riveting and groundbreaking work by children's book illustrator David Small.
| Author: Small, David |
HSE Descriptors:
language arts - reading | language arts - writing
|
Stone Lamp, The
This book of poems and accounts gives a personal and historical perspective of the meaning of lighting the Menorah lamps representing the eight nights of Hanukkah. The author tells in prose and poetry of real events from 1190 to 1995. Brian Pinkney's vi
| Author: Hesse, Karen |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet
A collection of 49 poems, these vignettes of Appalachian life are funny, sad, moving, and silly. Not all of them are of great quality; teachers may want to pick and choose among them. The poem (on pg. 50) on abuse is powerful and likely to provoke good
| Author: Carson, Jo |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
|
Tea With Milk
May (the author's mother) is learning American ways when her family moves back to Japan. When her parents hire a matchmaker to find her a husband, May moves to Osaka, begins a career, and finds her own happiness.
This Land is My Land
By telling his own story in words and in art, Littlefield describes what it is to be Native-American in the United States. He pays tribute to his ancestors and to the Native-American culture and history.
| Author: Littlechild, George |
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Up the Tracks to Grandma's
A girl describes her visits to her grandmother's home in a small-town Ohio in the middle 1900s, a time when her widowed grandmother plucked her own chickens, shoveled her own coal, and could not read English.
| Author: Hendershot, Judith |
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Virgie Goes to School with Us Boys
This is a recounting of a true family story about Virgie, who wants to go to school with her big brothers, despite her young age, the fact that girls were thought not to need an education, and the distance she must travel (7 miles).
| Author: Howard, Elizabeth |
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Walking the Log
The author paints scenes and reminisces about her childhood in the turn of the century South. The books contains information about daily life, work (especially picking cotton), childhood games, family values, and the author's life long interest in art.
What You Know First
A young girl does not want to leave the family farm that is being sold. She resolves her feelings realistically. The woodcut illustrations that look like old color-tinted photographs add veracity to the text.
| Author: MacLachlan, Patricia |
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When I Was Young in the Mountains
The narrator remembers various aspects and details of growing up in a mountain community.
Wolf on the Fold
Six linked storeis follow an Australian family from 1935 to 2002 as different generations cope with discord and violence. The use of flashbacks may cause some readers difficulty.
Wright Sister, The,
Often portrayed through letters, this biography, of Katherine Wright, the sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, is told against the historical background of the restrictions on women.
| Author: Maurer, Richard |
HSE Descriptors:
social studies
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