Woodson, Jacqueline
Show Way
Gr. 3-5. The image of a quilt with secret messages works as history in this exquisite picture book, based on Woodson’s family’s story of African American women-from slavery and the civil rights movement to the present. A 2006 Newbery Honor Book. c2005

J Fiction

Currier, Katrina Saltonstall
Kai’s Journey to Gold Mountain
Gr. 4-7. The fictionalized biography of a young Chinese immigrant boy, packed in with other internees on Angel Island during the 1930’s captures a seldom-told American story of heartbreak and strength through an intensely moving text and beautiful artwork. c2004

Erdrich, Louise
The Game of Silence
Gr. 5-8. In this powerful sequel to The Birchbark House(2003), the sense of loss is overwhelming as Erdrich tells of nine-year-old Omakaya’s displacement when white settlers grab the land of her Ojibwe people. The 2006 Scott O’Dell winner. c2005

LaFaye, A
Worth
Gr. 3-7. Winner of the 2005 Scott O’Dell award for historical fiction, this powerful novel tells the Orphan Train story from the viewpoint of a Nebraskan farm kid displaced by a newcomer. c2004

Levine, Ellen
Catch a Tiger by the Toe
Gr. 5-8. At the height of the McCarthy witch hunt, 13-year-old Jamie’s dad is fired from his job and tried as a Communist. Will he name names? The scary history and the crucial civil rights issues are part of the tense family drama. c2005

Stolz, Joëlle
The Shadows of Ghadames
Gr. 5-8. Malika, who lives in the Libyan city of Ghadmaes at the end of the nineteenth century, is dreading her twelfth birthday and her approaching marriage, but she finds a wider world when her father’s wives secretly harbor a wounded stranger. Winner of the Batchelder Award. c2004

YA Fiction

Bruchac, Joseph
Code Talker
Gr. 6-9. The history is thrilling, told through the fictionalized narrative of Navajo veteran Ned Begay, who remembers himself at 16 during World War II, being trained to use his native language for sending secret radio messages. c2005

Carvell, Marlene
Sweetgrass Basket
Gr. 7-10. Marie and Sarah suffer cruel abuse in Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Boarding School at the turn of the twentieth century. The Mohawk sisters’ loving connection is haunting while their world is filled with such cruel authority. c2005

Grant, K.M
Blood Red Horse
Gr. 6-9. Through the coming-of-age stories of two young men on opposite sides in war, this epic of the Crusades offers a historical perspective on modern conflicts and lays bare the gap between propaganda and the “dismal stinking nightmare” of reality. c2005

Glatshteyn, Yankev
Emil and Karl
This novel, written in Yiddish in 1940, was only recently translated into English. It’s a clear, powerful and haunting novel that will bring today’s readers very close to what it was like to be a child under Nazi occupation in Vienna. The story is about two friends, one Jewish and one who is not trying to manage on their own because of the deaths of their parents. The story reads like an adventure, and it neither sensational or sentimental. C2006

Lester, Julius
Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue
Gr. 6-9. Lester draws on historical sources to fictionalize the biggest slave auction in American history, which took place in 1859. The voices of the men and women for sale, the white masters and their families, and the brave runaways bring the history home. c2005

Morpurgo, Michael
Private Peaceful
Gr. 7-12. The terse, compelling narrative of a young English soldier in the trenches of WWI is as moving about the world left behind as it is about the horrific slaughter. c2004

Napoli, Donna
Bound
Gr. 7-12. Rooted in Chinese Cinderella tales, this powerful survival story, set during the Ming period, tells of Xing Xing, who serves as a slave to her cruel stepmother and to her stepsister, crippled by a botched foot binding. c2004

Roy, Jennifer
Yellow Star
Gr. 5-8. Roy writes the story of her aunt, one of only 12 surviving children of the Lodz ghetto, presenting it from the first-person viewpoint of a child in simple, urgent free verse in the present tense. Each section begins with a brief historical introduction. A perceptive and courageous addition to Holocaust literature. c2006

Salisbury, Graham
Eyes of the Emperor
Gr. 7-10. Eddie Okubo, a Japanese American in Hawaii, lies about his age and enlists in the U.S. Army during WWII, but the racism he encounters in the army is as terrifying as enemy fire. c2005

Schmidt, Gary
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
Gr. 7-12. On the Maine coast in 1912, teenage Turner makes friends with Lizzie, who is from a small, impoverished community that was founded by former slaves on nearby Malaga Island. Then the local white residents drive Lizzie’s people away. This powerful blend of fact and fiction was both a Newbury and Printz Honor book. c2004

Sturtevant, Katherine
A True and Faithful Narrative
Gr. 6-9. In a story of everyday life in the 1600’s, 16-year-old Meg struggles to sort out her conflicted feelings, and when her suitor returns from a sea voyage with tales of Muslim culture, her world view is changed. c2006

Wilson, Diane Lee
Black Storm Comin’
Gr. 7-10. Combining galloping adventure with terror, this story of a mixed-race teen who joins the Pony Express takes readers back to the West as it was in 1860. c2005