Historical Fiction Books

Illustrator: Colin Bootman
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company (January 1, 2005)
Reading Level: 4.2
Interest Level: K-3

While on a trip in 1956 to visit her grandmother in the South, six-year-old Sarah Marie experiences segregation for the first time, but discovers that things have changed by the time she returns the following year. **

Illustrator: Jerry Pinkney
Publisher: Dial (October 16, 2008)
Reading Level:4.8
Interest Level: K-3

On her family's farm in the town of Star, eight-year-old Mae eagerly follows the progress of the 1969 Apollo 11 flight and moon landing and dreams that she might one day be an astronaut, too. **

Illustrator: Jan Ormerod
Publisher: Clarion Books (October 23, 2007)
Reading Level: 4.8
Interest Level: Grades K-3

A young girl who is “not afraid of anything (except maybe storms)” travels the Oregon Trail with her family. **

Illustrator: Matt Phelan
Publisher: Candlewick (September 8, 2009)
Reading Level: 3.3
Interest Level Grades 5-8
This story takes place in Kansas during the Dust Bowl. Jack, who is just 11, can barely remember a time when there was enough water for the crops. Unable to help his father with a harvest that isn't there, and bullied by the other boys his age, he feels like a useless baby.**

Illustrators: Robert Hunt, Susan McAliley , George Sebok
Publisher: American Girl Publishing Inc (September 2007)
Reading Level: 4.5
Interest Level: Grades 3-6

Julie Albright doesn't want to move away from her San Francisco neighborhood near Chinatown, even if their new apartment is just a few miles away. Moving means leaving her best friend, Ivy, and her pet rabbit, Nutmeg. Worst of all, it means leaving Dad, now that her parents are divorced. Julie tries to make the best of it by joining the school's basketball team, but the coach won't allow girls to play. She learns that it's up to her to make positive changes in her new school--and her new life.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1st edition (February 20, 2007)
Reading Level: 4.1
Interest Level: Grades 3-6

Eleven-year-old Rex and his family move to Ottawa from Vancouver in the summer of 1962 when it seems everyone is nervous about the possibility of nuclear war between America and Russia, but his thoughts about the possible end of the world take second place to the mystery creature hiding out in the local park. **

Publisher: Amistad; 1 edition (January 26, 2010)
Reading Level: 5.0
Interest Level: Grades 5-8

n 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. **

Publisher: Scholastic Press (April 1, 2009)
Reading Level: 4.1
Interest Level: Grades 5-8

Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past.

Publisher: Atheneum; Reprint edition (October 7, 2008)
Reading Level: 4.9
Interest Level: Grades 5-8

This is a realistic story of the Vietnam war. It tells the story from two different viewpoints; an army dog named Cracker and her 17-year-old handler, Rick Hanski, who enlists to "whip the world" and avoid a routine job. **