Historical Fiction for Young Readers – serie

Thirteen-year-old Anna Kallio often thinks about the way life was before her mother died. Now responsible for running the house and caring for her younger brother, Matti, she has no time for school or playing with friends. And she worries about her father, who works in the dangerous iron mines.When Anna and Matti realize how lonely their father is, they plot to find him a new wife, even trying to arrange a match with one of the “mail order” brides arriving from Finland. But the results are different from anything that Anna expected.Set in 1907 in northern Minnesota’s iron-mining range, A Bride for Anna’s Papa is a vivid story of the courage it takes not only to survive but to enjoy life in a rugged frontier community.

Lavina Cumming has spent her entire first ten years of life on the Bosque Ranch in Arizona Territory, but when her mother dies, she must go live with her aunt in Santa Cruz, California.Armed with the Cumming family motto, “Courage,” Lavina starts off at dawn on September 16, 1905, leaving behind everything that is familiar. She arrives in a world of two-story houses, automobiles, a new school, and her cousin, “awful Aggie.” Trying her best to settle in, Lavina is as shocked as everyone else by the great earthquake that nearly demolishes the nearby city of San Francisco. In the aftermath of the quake, she must make a big decision about her future.Based on the true story of the author’s grandmother, I Am Lavina Cumming offers a compelling look at life in early twentieth-century California and a girl struggling to find her place there.

It's 1942. Thirteen-year-old Korinna Rehme is an active member of her local Jungmadel, a Nazi youth group, along with many of her friends. She believes that Hitler is helping Germany by instituting a program to deal with what he calls the "Jewish problem," a program that she witnesses as her Jewish neighbors are attacked and taken from their homes. Korinna's parents, however, are members of a secret underground group providing a means of escape to the Jews of their city. Korinna is shocked to discover that they are hiding a refugee family behind the wall of her bedroom. But as she comes to know the family, her sympathies begin to turn. When someone tips off the Gestapo, loyalties are put to the test and Korinna must decide what she really believes and whom she really trusts. Filled with adventure, Behind the Bedroom Wall helps readers understand the forces that drove so many to turn on their neighbors and the courage that allowed some to resist.