Category: Historical Fiction

Grades 3-6

Noah Keller’s life is turned upside down when his parents pick him up from school one day and announce that they won’t be going home to their house in Roanoke, Virginia, but rather to “the good Germany,” or East Berlin. It’s 1989 and they are hiding behind the Iron Curtain. There are so many secrets and lies that Noah can hardly keep up. For one, his name is now Jonah Brown, and his birthday is no longer in March, but rather in November. He begins to wonder when his mother became multi-lingual and what really happened to the parents of his friend Claudia, whom he calls Cloud. Will Noah’s life ever be the same again?

Grades 3-6

From the author who brought you The Fourteenth Goldfish comes this historical fiction story about a boy named Beans and his group of friends. It’s 1934 in Key  West, Florida, and they’re living in the middle of the Great Depression. The adults in his life lie to survive, but Beans isn’t a fool. He has survival plans of his own.

Grades 3-6

Audrey Rhodes lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s right, she lives in the White House, and her dad is the president. That makes her the First Daughter. She’s all set to have a party on Friday night, when it gets cancelled because of a security breach. She is very upset and goes to her room to sulk forever, when she finds the diary of Alice Roosevelt, a former first daughter who lived in that very room! Armed with new information about how to deal with life as a tween, Audrey’s spirits lift as she immerses herself in the past.

Grades 4-6

It’s the 1970s and everything depends on Raymie Clarke and what she does about it. Her father has run away with the dental hygienist, and she decides that now is the time to enter the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition. She thinks that if she wins, she will get her picture in the paper and her father will come home. Will her plan work?

Grades 4-6

In It Ain’t So Awful Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas, Zomorod, also known as Cindy, is eleven years old, and is moving for the fourth time. It is the late 1970s and her family is from Abadan, Iran. Sometimes they move back to Iran, and sometimes it’s another city in California.

This time, they move to Newport Beach, California, to a condominium, where there are lots of rules they need to follow:  take out the trash on Wednesday nights, don’t leave the empty bins out, and never, ever lose the pool key!

In addition to getting used to her new town, Cindy has to come with her mom everywhere so she can translate things from English to Persian and vice versa. Can she remember all those rules, translate things for her mom and fit in at her new school? Read It Ain’t So Awful Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas to find out!