Ancient Civilization

Barrett, Tracy
Anna of Byzantium
J Fiction
In the eleventh century the teenage princess Anna Comnena fights for her birthright, the throne to the Byzantine Empire, which she fears will be taken from her by her younger brother John because he is a boy.

Lester, Julius
Pharaoh's Daughter
J Fiction
A fictionalized account of a Biblical story in which an Egyptian princess rescues a Hebrew infant who becomes a prophet of his people while his sister finds her true self as a priestess to the Egyptian gods.

Levitin, Sonia
Escape From Egypt
Teen Fiction
When Moses comes to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, Jesse, a Hebrew slave, finds his life changed by his growing faith in God and his attraction to the half-Egyptian, half-Syrian Jennat.

Middle Ages, 400- mid 1400s

Bosse, Malcom
Captives of Time
Teen Fiction
Orphaned by the brutal murder of their parents, Anne and her gentle but mute brother suffer great hardships as they travel across a dangerous, pestilence-ridden Europe.

Cushman, Karen
Catherine, Called Birdy
J Fiction
The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life,particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.

Cushman, Karen
Matilda Bone
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
Fourteen-year-old Matilda, an apprentice bonesetter and practitioner of medicine in a village in medieval England, tries to reconcile the various aspects of her life, both spiritual and practical.

McGraw, Eloise Jarvis
The Striped Ships
J Fiction
Juliana, an eleven-year-old Saxon girl, loses her home and family when the Normans conquer England in 1066 and seeks to order her life by becoming involved in the creation of the Bayeux tapestry.

Park, Lind Sue
A Single Shard
J Fiction
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley
Song of the Gargoyle
J Fiction
When mysterious men in black abduct his father, the court jester of Austerneve, thirteen-year-old Tymmon flees into the forest, where he acquires a strange animal companion and plots to rescue his father.

Tomlinson, Theresa
The Forestwife
Teen Fiction
In England during the reign of King Richard I, fifteen-year-old Marian escapes from an arranged marriage to live with a community of forest folk that includes a daring young outlaw named Robert.

Williams, Laura E.
The Executioner's Daughter
J Fiction
Thirteen-year-old Lily, daughter of the town's executioner living in fifteenth-century Europe, decides whether to fight against her destiny or to rise above her fate.

Modern Europe: Renaissance, 1300s-1600s; Enlightenment, 1600s -1700s; Industrial Revolution, 1700s - 1800s

Blackwood, Gary
The Shakespeare Stealer
J Fiction
A young orphan boy is ordered by his master to infiltrate Shakespeare's acting troupe in order to steal the script of "Hamlet," but he discovers instead the meaning of friendship and loyalty.

Giff, Patricia Reilly
Nory Ryan's Song
J Fiction
When a terrible blight attacks Ireland's potato crop in 1845, twelve-year-old Nory Ryan's courage and ingenuity help her family and neighbors survive.

McCaughrean, Geraldine
The Pirate's Son
J Fiction
Left penniless in eighteenth century England, fourteen-year-old Nathan Gull and his mousy sister Maud accompany Tamo, the son of a notorious pirate, to his homeland of Madagascar where they are all changed by their encounter with Tamo's dangerous past.

Meyer, Carolyn
Doomed Queen Anne
Teen Fiction
In 1520, thirteen-year-old Anne Boleyn, jealous of her older sister's beauty and position at court, vows that she will one day be queen of England.

Meyer, Carolyn
Mary, Bloody Mary
Teen Fiction
Mary Tudor, who would reign briefly as Queen of England during the mid sixteenth century, tells the story of her troubled childhood as daughter of King Henry VIII.

Twain, Mark
The Prince and the Pauper
Adult Fiction
J Fiction
When a young Edward VI of England and a poor boy who resembles him exchange places, each learns about the other's very different station in life.

Yolen, Jane
Queen's Own Fool
J Fiction
When twelve-year-old Nicola leaves Troupe Brufort and serves as the fool for Mary, Queen of Scots, she experiences the political and religious upheavals in both France and Scotland.

Colonial & Revolutionary America, 1500s-1800

Anderson, Laurie Halse
Fever, 1793
Teen Fiction
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.

Avi
True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Teen Fiction
As the lone lady on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, Charlotte learns the captain is murderous and the crew rebellious.

Collier, James
Jump Ship To Freedom
J Fiction
In 1787, a fourteen-year-old slave anxious to buy freedom for himself and his mother escapes his dishonest master and tries to cash soldiers-notes, payment his father got for fighting in the Revolution.

Forbes, Esther
Johnny Tremain
J Fiction
After injuring his hand, a silversmith's apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.

Hansen, Joyce
The Captive
Teen Fiction
Find out how Kofi's world is shattered when ghostly white men arrive to sell his people into slavery.

O'Dell, Scott
Sarah Bishop
Teen Fiction
Left alone after her father and brother take opposite sides in the War for Independence, Sarah flees the British by trying to shape a new life for herself in the wilderness.

Reese, Celia
Witch Child
Teen Fiction
In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.

Rinaldi, Ann
The Blue Door
Teen Fiction
When her grandmother sends her alone on a difficult journey up North, fourteen-year-old Amanda encounters the exploitation of women in textile mills.

Rinaldi, Ann
A Break with Charity
J Fiction
While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.

Rinaldi, Ann
Broken Days
Teen Fiction
In 1811, life with her Aunt Hannah in Salem, Massachusetts, becomes even more difficult for fourteen-year-old Ebie with the arrival of a half-Indian girl who claims to be the daughter of Hannah's sister, Thankful, and with the threat of impending war.

Rinaldi, Ann
The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre
J Fiction
Fourteen-year-old Rachel Marsh, an indentured servant in the Boston household of John and Abigail Adams, is caught up in the colonists' unrest that eventually escalates into the massacre of March 5, 1770.

Rinaldi, Ann
The Secret of Sarah Revere
J Fiction
Paul Revere's daughter describes her father's "rides" and the intelligence network of the patriot community prior to the American Revolution.

Rinaldi, Ann
A Stitch in Time
Teen Fiction
Shortly after the War of Independence, Hannah sees her family being torn apart by old secrets and new developments, as her sister resolves to marry a sea captain and other siblings prepare to help start a new town in the Northwestern Territory.

Rinaldi, Ann
Wolf by the Ears
Teen Fiction
Harriet Hemings, rumored to be the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his black slaves, struggles with the problems facing her--to escape from the velvet cage that is Monticello, or to stay, and thus remain a slave.

Speare, Elizabeth
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
J Fiction
In 1687, sixteen-year-old Kit leaves the West Indies to live with her Puritan relatives in Connecticut Colony. Her friendship with an outcast Quaker woman make her a target for charges of witchcraft.

American Frontier

Auch, Mary Jane.
The Road to Home.
J Fiction
In 1817, after her mother has died and her father abandoned his children, thirteen-year-old Mem searches for a new home for Joshua, herself, and their little sister.

Conrad, Pam
Prairie Songs
J Fiction
Louisa's life in a loving pioneer family on the Nebraska prairie is altered by the arrival of a new doctor and his beautiful, tragically frail wife.

Curry, Jane Louise
Dark Shade
J Fiction
Sixteen-year-old Maggie attempts to save recently orphaned Kip from permanently going back in time to 1758 as an adopted Lenape in the primeval forests of western Pennsylvania.

Hahn, Mary Downing
The Gentleman Outlaw and Me -- Eli: A Story of the Old West
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
In 1887 twelve-year-old Eliza, disguised as a boy and traveling towards Colorado in search of her missing father, falls in with a Gentleman Outlaw and joins him in his illegal schemes.

Hudson, Jan
Sweetgrass
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
Living on the western Canadian prairie in the nineteenth century, Sweetgrass, a fifteen-year-old Blackfoot Indian girl, saves her family from a smallpox epidemic and proves her maturity to her father.

Nixon, Joan Lowery
Circle of Love
J Fiction
Nineteen-year-old Frances Mary Kelly, herself an orphan train rider six years before, returns to New York and agrees to escort a group of orphans west to find new homes.

Richter, Conrad
Light in the Forest
Adult Fiction
A white boy, taken by the Indians and reared as one of them, is forced to return to his white family.

Rinaldi, Ann
The Second Bend in the River
J Fiction
In 1798 Rebecca, a young settler in the Ohio territory, meets the Shawnee called Tecumseh and later develops a deep friendship with him.

Smith, Roland
The Captain's Dog
J Fiction
Captain Meriwether Lewis' dog Seaman describes his experiences as he accompanies his master on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the uncharted western wilderness.

19th Century America

Paterson, Katherine
Jip: His Story
J Fiction
While living on a Vermont poor farm during 1855 and 1856, Jip learns his identity and that of his mother and comes to understand how he arrived at this place.

Paterson, Katherine
Lyddie
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
Impoverished Vermont farm girl is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1840's.

Paterson, Katherine
Preacher's Boy
J Fiction
In 1899, ten-year-old Robbie, son of a preacher in a small Vermont town, gets himself into all kinds of trouble when he decides to give up being Christian in order to make the most of his life before the end of the world.

Rinaldi, Ann
The Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and McCoys
J Fiction
In the 1880s, young Fanny McCoy witnesses the growth of a terrible and violent feud between her Kentucky family and the West Virginia Hatfields, complicated by her older sister Roseanna's romance with a Hatfield.

Twain, Mark
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adult Fiction
J Fiction
Adventures of a young boy and a run-away slave as they float down the Mississippi on a raft.

Civil War, 1861-1865

Crane, Stephen
Red Badge of Courage
Adult Fiction
J Fiction
Classic Civil War novel revolving the battle of Chancerllorsville.

20th Century America

Gregory, Kristiana
Earthquake at Dawn
J Fiction
A novelization of twenty-two-year-old photographer Edith Irvine's experiences in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, as seen through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Daisy, a fictitious traveling companion.

Hesse, Karen
A Time of Angels
J Fiction
Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.

Kirkpatrick, Katherine
Keeping the Good Light
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
Bored with living in a New York lighthouse at the turn of the twentieth century, sixteen-year-old Eliza seeks a teaching position away from home.

Peck, Robert Newton
A Day No Pigs Would DieJ Fiction
A twelve-year-old Shaker boy comes of age during the 1920s on a Vermont farm.

Thesman, Jean
The Ornament Tree
Teen Fiction
J Fiction
When fourteen-year-old Bonnie moves to her cousin's boardinghouse in Seattle in 1918, she learns about life from the boarders and progressive women who live and work there.

Thesman, Jean
The Tree of Bells
J Fiction
While living in a boardinghouse managed by her mother and grandmother in Seattle in 1922, sixteen-year-old Clare decides her future at a time of limited opportunities for women.

Williams, Barbara
Titanic Crossing
J Fiction
In 1912, thirteen-year-old Albert considers his younger sister a pest, but things change when they travel with their mother and uncle aboard the Titanic and are caught up in its tragic sinking.

20th Century America: The Great Depression, 1930s

Taylor, Mildred
Let the Circle Be Unbroken
Teen Fiction
Four black children growing up in rural Mississippi during the depression experience racial antagonisms and hard times but learn from their parents the pride and self-respect they need to survive.

Koller, Jackie French
Nothing to Fear
J Fiction
When his father moves away to find work and his mother becomes ill, Danny struggles to help his family during the Great Depression.

Thesman, Jean
The Storyteller's Daughter
J Fiction
Fifteen-year-old Quinn, the middle child in a Depression-era working class family, learns some secrets about her beloved father, who has always been a source of strength and optimism for his family, friends, and neighbors.

20th Century - Race, Prejudice, Civil Rights, Black Americans

Curtis, Christopher Paul
The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963
J Fiction
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Hesse, Karen
Witness
J Fiction
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.

20th Century - New Immigrants

Danticat, Edwidge
Behind the Mountains
J Fiction
Thirteen-year-old Celiane describes life with her mother and brother in Haiti as well as her experiences in Brooklyn after the family finally immigrates there to be reunited with her father.

Nixon, Joan Lowery
Land of Dreams
J Fiction
In 1902 sixteen-year-old Kristin travels with her family from Sweden to a new life in Minnesota, where she finds herself frustrated by the restrictions placed on what girls of her age are expected or allowed to do.

Nixon, Joan Lowery
Land of Hope
J Fiction
Rebekah, a fifteen-year-old Jewish immigrant arriving in New York City in 1902, almost abandons her dream of getting an education when she is forced to work in a sweatshop.

Veciana-Suarez, Ana
Flight to Freedom
Teen Fiction
Thirteen-year-old Yara describes life with her family in Havana, Cuba, in 1967 as well as her experiences in Miami, Florida, after immigrating there to be reunited with some relatives.

World War I, 1914-1918

Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
Adult Fiction
A love story between an ambulance driver and an English nurse set against the brutality of World War I.

Remarque, Erich Maria
All Quiet on the Western Front
Adult Fiction
Paul and his classmates enlist in the German Army.

Rostkowski, Margaret
After the Dancing Days
Teen Fiction
A forbidden friendship with a badly disfigured soldier in the aftermath of World War I forces thirteen-year-old Annie to redefine the word "hero" and to question conventional ideas of patriotism.

World War II, 1939-1945

Bat-Ami, Miriam
Two Suns in the Sky
Teen Fiction
Fifteen-year-old Adam, a Yugoslav Jew is living in the refugee camp at Oswego, New York when he begins a romance with a local girl named Chris.

Bunting, Eve
Spying on Miss Muller
J Fiction
At Alveara boarding school in Belfast at the start of World War II, thirteen-year-old Jessie must deal with her suspicions about a teacher whose father was German and with her worries about her own father's drinking problem.

Collins, Alan
Jacob's Ladder
Teen Fiction
The world of Jacob and his younger brother Solly falls apart when they are orphaned and pitched into a Sydney children's home, where other refugee Jewish children are gathering as Hitler rises to power in Europe.

Greene, Bette
Summer of My German Soldier
Teen Fiction
When German prisoners of war are brought to her Arkansas town during World War II, twelve-year-old Patty Bergen, a Jewish girl, shelters a pacifist German POW who escapes. She must face the consequences of her actions as she risks losing her family and friends over her new friendship.

Matas, Carol
Daniel's Story
J Fiction
Daniel, whose family suffers as the Nazis rise to power in Germany, describes his imprisonment in a concentration camp and his eventual liberation.

Matas, Carol
Greater than Angels
Teen Fiction
Anna, a teenaged German refugee, relates how she and other Jewish children were cared for by the citizens of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, during the German occupation.

Mazer, Norma Fox
Good Night Maman
J Fiction
After spending years fleeing from the Nazis in war-torn Europe, twelve-year-old Karin Levi and her older brother Marc find a new home in a refugee camp in Oswego, New York.

Orlev, Uri
The Lady with the Hat
J Fiction
In 1947, seventeen-year-old Yulek, the only member of his immediate family to survive the German concentration camps, joins a group of young Jews preparing to live on a kibbutz in Israel, unaware that his aunt living in London is looking for him.

Reeder, Carolyn
Foster's War
J Fiction
When his older brother joins the army during World War II in order to escape the rages of an authoritarian father, eleven-year-old Foster fights his battles on the homefront.

Rinaldi, Ann
Keep Smiling Through
J Fiction
The details of living in 1934 - rationing, radio soap operas, siblings not returning home alive - are vivid in this story of a 10-year-old girl trying to cope with unloving parents and her grandfather's arrest because he is German.

Taylor, Theodore
The Bomb
Teen Fiction
In 1945, when the Americans liberate the Bikini Atoll from the Japanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat.

Vos, Ida
Anna is Still Here
J Fiction
Thirteen-year-old Anna, who was a "hidden child" in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II, gradually learns to deal with the realities of being a survivor.

Vos, Ida
Dancing on the Bridge of Avignon
J Fiction
Relates the experiences of a young Jewish girl and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Watkins, Yoko Kawashima
So Far from the Bamboo Grove
J Fiction
In her fictionalized autobiography, Yoko's story begins as a young girl who lives with her family in North Korea while her father, a Japanese government official is stationed there. Yoko and her family flee to Japan to escape from North Korean Communists.

Wolff, Virginia Euer
Bat 6
J Fiction
In small town, post-World War II Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface.

Korean War, 1950-1953

Choi, Sook Nyul
Echoes of the White Giraffe
J Fiction
Fifteen-year-old Sookan adjusts to life in the refugee village in Pusan but continues to hope that the civil war will end and her family will be reunited in Seoul.

Vietnam War, 1957-1975

Easton, Kelly
The Life History of a Star
Teen Fiction
For more than a year, fourteen-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her confused thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence and the emotional strain on her beloved family of living with the "ghost" of her beloved older who was physically and mentally destroyed while serving in Vietnam.

Hobbs, Valerie
Sonny's War
Teen Fiction
After Corin's father passes away, her older brother Sonny enlists in the Army. She is devastated by his absence and becomes passionately involved in the antiwar movement.

Mason, Bobbie Ann
In Country
Adult Fiction
At age 17, Sam is obsessed with the Vietnam War and the effect it has had on her life - losing a father she never knew and living with her Uncle Emmett who is suffering from the effects of Agent Orange.

Myers, Walter
Fallen Angels
Teen Fiction
Seventeen-year-old Richie enlists in the army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

O'Brien, Tim
The Things They Carried
Adult Fiction
Not truly memoir nor short stories, O'Brien's novel is a combination of truth and fiction from many perspectives.

White, Ellen Emerson
The Road Home
Teen Fiction
Shortly after finishing nursing school, 21-year-old Rebecca, goes to Vietnam where she takes care of wounded GIs and experiences the horrors of war.

Compiled by Melissa Rice, Readers Services Librarian. 6/2003. Updated by Emilia Burka 8/2007.

www.webrary.org/rs/bibhistfict.html
First published on the Web: 5/28/2003
Last updated: 9/13/2007