Children's Literature Guide

Butterfly Yellow / Thanhhà Lại

In the final days of the Việt Nam War, Hằng takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. When Linh is ripped from her arms, Hằng is left behind in the war-torn country. Six years later, Hằng is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn't know how she will find her little brother until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her. Reunited with Linh, she realizes he doesn't remember her, their family, or Việt Nam. Her heart is crushed, but she will do anything to bridge the gap.

Finding Langston / Cline-Ransome, Lesa

Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.

Beyond the Bright Sea / Wolk, Lauren

Twelve-year-old Crow has lived her entire life on a tiny, isolated piece of the starkly beautiful Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts. Abandoned and set adrift in a small boat when she was just hours old, Crow's only companions are Osh, the man who rescued and raised her, and Miss Maggie, their fierce and affectionate neighbor across the sandbar. Crow has always been curious about the world around her, but it isn't until the night a mysterious fire appears across the water that the unspoken question of her own history forms in her heart. Soon, an unstoppable chain of events is triggered, leading Crow down a path of discovery and danger. Vivid and heart-wrenching, Lauren Wolk's Beyond the Bright Sea is a gorgeously crafted and tensely paced tale that explores questions of identity, belonging, and the true meaning of family. 

Full of Beans / Holm, Jennifer L.

Ten-year-old Beans Curry, a member of the Keepsies, the best marble playing gang in Depression-era Key West, Florida, engages in various schemes to earn money while "New Dealers" from Washington, D.C., arrive to turn run down Key West into a tourist resort.

2016

The Hired Girl / Schlitz, Laura Amy

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of a woman with a future.

PZ7.S347145 HI 2015

2015

Dash / Larson, Kirby

When her family is forced into an internment camp, Mitsi Kashino is separated from her home, her classmates, and her beloved dog Dash; and as her family begins to come apart around her, Mitsi clings to her one connection to the outer world--the letters from the kindly neighbor who is caring for Dash.

PZ7.L32394 DAS 2014

2014

Bo at Ballard Creek / Hill, Kirkpatrick

It's the 1920s, and Bo was headed for an Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village.

PZ7 .H55285 BO 2013

2013

Chickadee / Erdrich, Louise

In 1866, Omakayas's son Chickadee is kidnapped by two ne'er-do-well brothers from his own tribe and must make a daring escape, forge unlikely friendships, and set out on an exciting and dangerous journey to get back home.

PZ7 .E72554 CH 2012

2012

Dead End in Norvelt / Gantos, Jack.

In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

PZ7 .G15334 DD 2011

2011

One Crazy Summer / Williams-Garcia, Rita.

In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet, and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

PZ7 .W6713 ON 2010

2010

The Storm in the Barn / Phelan, Matt

In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary challenges: local bullies, his father's failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness. Certainly a case of "dust dementia" would explain who (or what) Jack has glimpsed in the Talbot's abandoned barn - a sinister figure with a face like rain. In a land where it never rains, it's hard to trust what you see with your own eyes, and harder still to take heart and be a hero when the time comes.

PZ7 .P44882 ST 2009

2009

Chains / Anderson, Louise Halse

After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

PZ7 .A54385 CH 2008

2008

Elijah of Buxton / Curtis, Christopher Paul

In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.

PZ7 .C94137 EL 2007

2007

The Green Glass Sea / Klages, Ellen

It is 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west on a train to live with her scientist father--but no one will tell her exactly where he is. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he's working on a top secret government program.

PZ7 .K6768 GR 2006

2006

The Game of Silence / Erdrich, Louise

Nine-year-old Omakayas, of the Ojibwa tribe, moves west with her family in 1849.

PZ7.E72554 GAM 2005

2005

Worth / LaFaye, A.

After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse.

PZ7.L1413 WO 2004

2004

The River Between Us / Peck, Richard

During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.

PZ7.P338 RI 2003

2003

Trouble Don't Last / Pearsall, Shelley

Samuel, an eleven-year-old Kentucky slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad.

PZ7.P3166 TR 2002

2002

The Land / Taylor, Mildred D.

After the Civil War Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.

PZ7.T21723 LAN 2001

2001

The Art of Keeping Cool / Lisle, Janet Taylor

In 1942, Robert and his cousin Elliot uncover long-hidden family secrets while staying in their grandparents' Rhode Island town, where they also become involved with a German artist who is suspected of being a spy. Soon after Robert arrives at his grandfather's home in Rhode Island in 1942, just after the U.S. enters World War II, he learns of a German painter living in the woods who raises the community's suspicions, and of the mystery his RAF pilot father left behind after fleeing his home.

PZ7.L6912 AR 2002

2000

Two Suns in the Sky / Bat-Ami, Miriam

In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents' conviction that they do not belong together. During World War II, a 15-year-old girl meets a young Jewish refugee in a New York shelter and soon learns the history behind her city through interaction with her new friend, as well as the barriers that exist when different cultures unite.

PZ7.B2939 TW 2001