Author: Kwame Alexander
Published: 2022 This story is about the Asante people in the year 1860 who lived in a place called Upper Kwanta in West Africa now known as Ghana. Kofi is a young boy who love to swim and loves his family. At school he is expected to speak in only English but at home he is expected to speak Twi, his home language. In a festival called the Kings Festival, Upper Kwanta and Lower Kwanta have a wrestling contest between each village's best fighters. Kofi's brother Kwasi is selected to participate. When Kwasi is wrestling with the prince of Lower Kwanta, something horrible happens. Soon after that, something even worse happens and Kofi finds himself captured and in more danger than ever before. The Door of No Return is a heartbreaking historical fiction novel written in verse.
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Author: Bryce Moore
Published: 2021 Zuretta and her sister Ruby live with an abusive father and their mother. Ruby decides to run away to Chicago but Zuretta can't stand the thought of abandoning her mom. That night was the last time she saw Ruby. At first Ruby writes her letters, but when they stop coming Zuretta is worried that something horrible has happened. Zuretta decides to go to Chicago and try to get help from the Pinkertons, a famous detective agency. She discovers that she won't get any help unless she has some proof, so Zuretta goes to the Castle, a strange hotel that Ruby was employed at before she disappeared, and she goes undercover as a maid. While there, Zuretta learns that this hotel has had a bad reputation for disappearing girls. She is flabbergasted at the very strange way that the building is created. There are random doors that open up to brick walls and weird twists and turns. Soon she finds that she is in more danger than she realizes. The Perfect Place to Die is a great historical thriller that will have readers captivated until the end. Author: Jane Kuo
Published: 2022 Anna and her parents live in Taiwan with her relatives. They live a very happy life and have plenty of money to get by. They want to go to America for more opportunities. When her family goes to California, they realize that nothing is what they thought it would be. Anna is bullied at school for the way she looks and the food that she brings for lunch. Her parents spent all their money buying a restaurant and realize that they aren't making as much as they hoped and are barely staying afloat. Is America really ever going to be their home? In the Beautiful Country is a fantastic story written in verse that reminds me of Front Desk by Kelly Yang. Perfect for middle grade readers. Author: Ruta Sepetys
Published: 2021 Cristian Florescu lives in Romania in the year 1989. The leader of the country is Nicolae Ceausescu, a dictator who has made life horrible for the people who live there. There is never enough food, and everyone is on edge because at any minute if they do anything that they are not supposed to, someone will turn them in. There are always eyes watching. Cristian is blackmailed by a member of the secret police to become an informer. He has to spy on a family that his mom works for and report back. If he does, his grandfather who is suffering from cancer will be given medicine that could really help him. Cristian feels awful being an informer, but he doesn't really feel like he has a choice. It is illegal to say anything bad about Ceausescu or the country of Romania, but Cristian keeps a little notebook with all his thoughts in it. He is honest about how he feels, and if anyone were to find it, he would get severely punished. When there is talk of rising up and going against Ceausescu with the hope of a better future for Romania, Cristian needs to decide if he is going to be a part of it or not. I Must Betray You is a fantastic historical fiction novel about a piece of history I knew very little about. I could not put this one down! Author: Helen Frost
Published: 2020 Henry is a little boy in 1937 when he gets really sick. After he gets better, he and his family realize that he can no longer hear anymore. He is sent to live at an institution called Riverside because he is considered to be "unteachable." While there, he and the other children experience poor living conditions and abuse. Henry doesn't know why his family left him there all alone. As time goes on, he makes some friends at Riverside. While World War II is going on, they are losing workers as many are going off to fight in the war. Victor is a conscientious objector, meaning he doesn't believe in war and refuses to fight. In those times, if you were a CO, you were either put in prison or you were given a necessary job. He is assigned to Riverside. Victor is kind and patient with the children there, unlike many of the other workers. And he doesn't think that Henry is unteachable. All He Knew is a fantastic historical fiction middle grade novel told in verse. My heart broke for Henry and the other boys at Riverside for the way they were treated. Author: Sharon Cameron
Published: 2021 Inge is the daughter of a doctor at a concentration camp in Germany. Her impression of the camps is that they exist to help make people into better German citizens--she has not witnessed their true nature. When Hitler kills himself and Germany surrenders, she runs to the camp to find her father in the chaos and finds that he has escaped, but then she sees what he really did at the camp and she is horrified. Eva arrives to America from Berlin. She has a deep, dark secret. She made a deal with someone in order to get to America, and she is trying to figure out how she can get out of this deal in order to achieve what she really came to there to do. Bluebird is a fantastic historical fiction novel with some great mysterious aspects. I could not put this book down! I loved learning more about this history. Author: Anne Blankman
Published: 2020 The Blackbird Girls is told from three different points-of-view. Valentina and Oksana are living in Ukraine in 1986. Rifka is also in Ukraine in 1941. Valentina and Oksana are not friends. In fact, Oksana is a bully who makes fun of Valentina because she is Jewish. Both of their fathers work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It is 1986 and Valentina wakes up and notices that all the birds are gone and there's a weird blue smoke coming from the power plant. They soon find out that there was an accident at Chernobyl and the men who were working there are in critical condition or worse. Soon everyone is ordered to evacuate because of the dangerous radiation effects from the disaster. Valentina and Oksana find themselves traveling together. Rifka lives with her mom and her two younger brothers with another younger sibling on the way. Her family is Jewish, and when there are rumors that Germans are coming, Rifka's mom tells her that Rifka must escape on her own for a chance at surviving. Rifka has to leave behind her family knowing that they are in serious danger. These two stories told forty years apart connect. The Blackbird Girls is a fantastic historical fiction novel that fans of Jennifer Nielsen will devour! Author: June Hur
Published: 2021 Hwani and her younger sister Maewol went missing years ago and were discovered unconscious next to a dead body in a forest. Hwani has no memory of the event, and Maewol remembers seeing a man in a white mask. Their father, who is a detective, has never been able to figure out what happened the day they went missing. Years pass and now Detective Min, their father, is missing. He learned that thirteen girls had gone missing near that same forest, and when he went to go investigate he never came home. Hwani sees it as her duty to find her father, figure out what happened to those thirteen girls, and maybe even figure out what happened in that forest years ago. But nothing is simple. She and her sister do not have a great relationship, and Hwani doesn't know who she can trust. The Forest of Stolen Girls is good for readers of historical fiction and mysteries. Author: Traci Chee
Published: 2020 We Are Not Free follows the stories of fourteen different Japanese American teenagers after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor during World War II, all Japanese Americans were viewed as the enemy and were rounded up and put into internment camps as if they were criminals. They were forced to leave behind their homes and their belongings and their freedom. Each chapter is from the point-of-view of a different character, and all the stories intertwine. In each chapter we hear about the horrible way Japanese Americans were treated. Some signed up to fight in the war, some are moved from camp to camp, some are arrested for nothing and are kept as prisoners in even worse conditions than the camps. While this book is historical fiction, the author Traci Chee's grandparents and their families were put into these incarceration camps. Chee interviewed her relatives and their stories inspired some of the elements in this book. We Are Not Free is a fantastic book that is so important. As Chee says in the author's note, "During my research, the more I have learned about our history, the more I have come to realize that we are part of an ongoing pattern of injustices that have affected and are still affecting millions of people of color on this continent...I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself in new and sometimes more horrific ways." Read this book. Author: Allan Wolf
Published: 2020 In 1846, the Donner and Reed families, along with several others, decided to make their way from Illinois to California in order to get land, a journey of about 2000 miles. Partway through their journey, this group had a decision to make--take the well-known Oregon Trail or take a shortcut that would supposedly save them a lot of time. The Reeds and the Donners along with some others decided to use the shortcut they had heard about. The group was led by George Donner and so they called themselves the Donner party. Unfortunately, the shortcut was not actually a shortcut and led them through land that caused them to lose their wagons, their oxen, and was very hard on the travelers. By the time they finished with the supposed shortcut, it was in late September. When winter came early, the Donner party got snowed in in the Sierra Nevada mountains. This is a fictionalized account of the horrifying true event of what happened on the Donner party's journey west. When they were snowed in, they didn't have enough food and faced starvation. They did what they had to in order to survive, though not everyone did survive. Told from the different perspectives of people on the journey along with the voice of Hunger, this book is haunting and dark and real. I had a very hard time putting it down, and I also had a hard time thinking about the horrors this group experienced. |
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