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It was 1964 in the brand-new state of Alaska, a vast land of staggering beauty and heart-stopping dangers. Eleven-year-old Jack had grown up living happily with his parents in an off-the-grid cabin, miles from their closest neighbors. Grizzlies and wolves outnumbered people, and dark winter days were 30 degrees below zero. Jack had always thought of himself as strong--"Alaska tough". But then the most powerful earthquake in American history--the Good...
2) Sugar
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In 1870, Reconstruction brings big changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where spunky ten-year-old Sugar has always lived, including changes to her friendship with Billy, the son of her former master, and the arrival of workmen from China.
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English
Description
In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.
5) Freewater
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"Under the cover of night, twelve-year-old Homer flees Southerland Plantation with his little sister Ada, unwillingly leaving their beloved mother behind. Much as he adores her and fears for her life, Homer knows there's no turning back, not with the overseer on their trail. Through tangled vines, secret doorways, and over a sky bridge, the two find a secret community called Freewater, deep in the swamp. In this society created by formerly enslaved...
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"Cash, Fitch, and Bird Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main and wrestles with an explosive...
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6th Grade Reading
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors for Kids
Historical Fiction for Kids
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Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors for Kids
Historical Fiction for Kids
More Lists...
Description
In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves. Includes author's note.
Author
Language
English
Description
Deza Malone, the smartest girl in her class in Gary, Indiana, accompanies her mother and older brother on a trip to find her father, an African American man who left to find work after the Great Depression hit. They end up in a Hooverville outside of Flint, Michigan, and her brother attempts to be a performer while Deza and her mother search for a home.
10) P.S. Be eleven
Author
Language
English
Description
The Gaither sisters return to Brooklyn, where they adapt to new feelings of independence while managing changes large and small, from Pa's new girlfriend to a very different Uncle Darnell's return from Vietnam.
13) Pink and Say
Author
Language
English
Description
Chronicles the frienship of Pink, a fifteen-year-old African-American Union soldier, and Say, his poor white comrade, as one nurses the other back to health from a battle wound and the two of them are imprisoned at Andersonville. Based on a true story.
14) Fever, 1793
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.
15) Echo Mountain
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When twelve-year-old Ellie and her family lose their livelihood and move to a mountain cabin in 1934, she quickly learns to be an outdoors woman and, when needed, a healer.
16) Amber & Clay
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"In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, "ringed by a restless sea," live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto...
17) The book thief
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YA Books That Will Make You Cry
YA Novels in English and in Spanish/Novelas para jovenes en inglés y español
YA Novels in English and in Spanish/Novelas para jovenes en inglés y español
Description
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
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Children's and Middle Grade Novels in Spanish and English/Novelas juveniles en español e inglés
Middle School Project Lit Titles
NYT - Middle Grade Paperback
Project Lit - Full List
Middle School Project Lit Titles
NYT - Middle Grade Paperback
Project Lit - Full List
Description
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
19) Northwind
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When sickness decimates his fishing village, an orphan named Leif flees north in a cedar canoe, journeying along a brutal but beautiful coastline.
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Lula Viramontes dreams of one day becoming someone whom no one can ignore: a daring ringleader in a Mexican traveling carpa, despite her father's traditional views of what girls should be. When her family arrives for the grape harvest in Delano, California, Lula meets activist Dolores Huerta and el Teatro Campesino (the official theater company of the United Farm Workers). She discovers an even more pressing reason to raise her voice: the upcoming...