List: 2023 Teen Reading Challenge: Featuring a Historical Event
Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
Native American Jim Thorpe became a super athlete and Olympic gold medalist. Indomitable coach Pop Warner was a football mastermind. In 1907 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work. Sheinkin provides a true underdog sports story -- and an unflinching look at the U.S. government's violent persecution of Native Americans and the school that was designed to erase Indian cultures.
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The Davenports
The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love--even where they're not supposed to. There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married . . . until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love--unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business--and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest . . . until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.
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Her Rebel Highness
High school senior Lei unexpectedly finds love amid the student protests in Beijing in 1989, forcing her to choose between her family and its legacy or her future with a revolutionary leader.
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Angel of Greenwood
Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. A passionate follower of W.E.B. Du Bois, he believes that black people should rise up to claim their place as equals. Sixteen-year-old Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family's financial situation is in turmoil. Also, as a loyal follower of Booker T. Washington, she believes, through education and tolerance, that black people should rise slowly and without forced conflict. Though they've attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can't turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon.But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.
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Rebel Spy
1776. A shipwreck off her home in Grand Bahama Island presents an unthinkable opportunity for Frannie Tasker to escape her brutal stepfather. Assuming the identity of drowned Emmeline Coates, Frannie is rescued by a British merchant ship and sails with the crew to New York. For the next three years, Frannie lives a lie as Miss Coates, swept up in a courtship by a dashing British lieutenant. But after witnessing the darker side of the war, she realizes that her position gives her power. Soon she is risking everything to pass information on to George Washington's Culper spy ring as agent 355. --
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The Silent Unseen
In July 1944, as the Red Army drives the Nazis out of Poland, sixteen-year-old Maria Kamińska must work with a captured Ukrainian nationalist to find her brother, who is a special operations agent and leader of a Polish Resistance squad, when he disappears while on a mission.
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Butterfly Yellow
A Vietnam War refugee in Texas partners with a city boy with rodeo dreams to track down the younger brother she was separated from six years before when he was evacuated by American troops during the waning days of the Vietnam War.
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Stage Dreams
The New Mexico Territory, 1861. Young Grace, a trans runaway, has headed west, fleeing her Georgia home--and conscription into the Confederate Army. But her coach ride to California makes an unplanned stop when notorious outlaw the Ghost Hawk swoops in, shaking down its passengers and stealing away with Grace. The Ghost Hawk--Flor, to her friends--means to hold Grace for ransom. But when the two get to talking about Flor's plan to crash a Confederate gala, Grace convinces Flor to let her join the heist.
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Saving Savannah
1919. As a daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington D.C., Savannah is lucky, but feels suffocated by the structure of society. Lloyd, a young West Indian man from the working class, opens her eyes to how the other half lives. As Savannah is drawn more and more to Lloyd's world, she must decide how much she is willing to "be the change" in a world on the brink of dramatic transformation.
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Gold Mountain
Fifteen-year-old Tam Ling Fan disguises herself as her twin brother, journeys from her village in China to California, and works as a laborer on the Transcontinental Railroad--where she faces danger on multiple fronts--to earn the money her family desperately needs. Includes author's note.
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Luck of the Titanic
After smuggling herself onto the RMS Titanic, British-Chinese teenager Valora Luck reunites with her twin brother and tries to convince him that their acrobatic training could be their ticket to a better life.
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A Cloud of Outrageous Blue
After her parents' deaths, Edyth is sent to live in a priory, where she begins to make a new life--a life that will be threatened by the approach of the Great Plague.
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Walls
In the days before the treacherous overnight raising of the Berlin Wall, teenaged cousins Drew, an American army brat in West Berlin, and Matthias, a young communist in East Berlin, become wary friends on opposite sides of the Cold War. Interspersed throughout the story are captioned photographs from the era.
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Hotel Magnifique
Seventeen-year-old Jani and her little sister Zosa secure jobs at a glamorous magical hotel, but when Jani realizes that their staff contracts are unbreakable, she embarks on a mission to unravel the mystery of the magic at the heart of the hotel and free Zosa--and the other staff--from the cruelty of the ruthless maître d'hôtel.
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A Sitting in St. James
1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family's indifference, to sit for a portrait. It will be a testament to all the hardships she overcame, the glory her life ought to have been. As she sits for the portrait, other stories are revealed: that of Thisbe, an enslaved woman who must stand silent by her mistress but observes everything. Or Byron, heir to the plantation, whose desires cannot fit with his family duty. Stories that span generations, and secrets that are buried as deep as the family fortune.
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Anatomy: A Love Story
Edinburgh, 1817. Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry. Jack Currer is a resurrection man who is just trying to survive in a city where it is too easy to die. They have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist's Society. After she gets kicked out of Dr. Beecham's lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be very helpful. Hazel makes a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, the university will allow her to enroll. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need bodies to study, corpses to dissect. Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets. Hazel and Jack work together to uncover the secrets buried in the very heart of Edinburgh society. --
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Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America
The 1929 Air Derby was the first women's air race across the U.S. Meet the trailblazers: Amelia Earhart, who has captivated generations; Marvel Crosson, who built a plane before she even learned how to fly; Louise Thaden, who shattered jaw-dropping altitude records; and Elinor Smith, who at age seventeen made headlines when she flew under the Brooklyn Bridge. The Derby was a suspenseful, nail-biting race across the country, and Sheinkin brings to life the glory and grit of the dangerous and thrilling early days of flying.
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Maus I: A Survivor's Tale
The author-illustrator traces his father's imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp through a series of disarming and unusual cartoons arranged to tell the story as a novel.
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Rima's Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny
In 1920s Cuba, Rima is bullied and shunned for her illegitimacy, but finds solace in riding her horse and forges unexpected friendships with others who share her dreams of freedom and suffrage.
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Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown
As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night. The Cold War game grows more precarious as weapons are pointed towards each other, with fingers literally on the trigger. The decades-long showdown culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world's close call with the third-and final-world war.
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African Town
In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.
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Within These Lines
Italian-American Evalina and Japanese-American Taichi's vow to be together, although interracial marriage is illegal in 1941 San Francisco, is tested when Taichi's family is sent to Manzanar internment camp. Includes historical notes.
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The Storyteller
Sefia is determined to keep Archer out of the Guard's clutches and their plans for war between the Five Kingdoms. The Book, the ancient, infinite codex of the past, present and future, tells of a prophecy that will plunge Kelanna in that bloody war, but it requires a boy--Archer--and Sefia will stop at nothing to ensure his safety. The Guard has already stolen her mother, her father, and her Aunt Nin. Sefia would sooner die than let them take anymore from her--especially the boy she loves. But escaping the Guard and the Book's prophecy is no easy task. After all, what is written always comes to pass. As Sefia and Archer watch Kelanna start to crumble to the Guard's will, they will have to choose between their love and joining a war that just might tear them apart. Full of magic, suspense, and mystery, Traci Chee brings her Sea of Ink and Gold trilogy to a close in this spellbinding final installment.
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I Must Betray You
In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country.
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The Weight of Our Sky
Amidst the Chinese-Malay conflict in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, sixteen-year-old Melati must overcome prejudice, violence, and her own OCD to find her way back to her mother.
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The Deep Blue Between
In 1890s West Africa, when a brutal raid leaves their home in ruins, twin sisters Hassana and Husseina are kidnapped, sold into slavery, and separated, remaining connected through shared dreams of water, but will their fates ever draw them back together?
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Stolen Science: Thirteen Untold Stories of Scientists and Inventors Almost Written out of History
Over the centuries, women, people from underrepresented communities, and immigrants overcame prejudices and social obstacles to make remarkable discoveries in science-but they weren't the ones to receive credit in history books. People with more power, money, and prestige were remembered as the inventor of the telephone, the scientists who decoded the structure of DNA, and the doctor who discovered the cause of yellow fever. This book aims to set the record straight and celebrate the nearly forgotten inventors and scientists who shaped our world today.
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They Went Left
Zofia, a teenage Holocaust survivor, travels across post-war Europe as she searches for her younger brother and seeks to rebuild her shattered life.
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Splinters of Scarlet
In nineteenth-century Copenhagen, an orphaned seamstress goes to work for a retired ballerina and uses her magic to investigate her father's mysterious death while working for the same family years ago.
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The Forest of Stolen Girls
In 1426 in Joseon, a year after her father vanishes while investigating the disappearance of thirteen girls, eighteen-year-old Min Hwani returns to the island of Jeju to pick up his trail with the help of her estranged sister.
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The Blossom and the Firefly
Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before his first and only mission. He believes he is ready to die for his country . . . until he meets Hana. Hana hasn't been the same since the day she was buried alive in a collapsed trench during a bomb raid. She wonders if it would have been better to have died that day . . . until she meets Taro. A song will bring them together. The war will tear them apart. Is it possible to live an entire lifetime in eight short days?
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Lovely War
In the perilous days of World Wars I and II, the Gods held the fates -- and the hearts -- of four mortals in their hands. Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect turned soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the US Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgementon Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though war is a formidable force, it's so match for the transcendent power of love.
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The Silent Stars Go By
It's Christmas time, 1919. Three years before, seventeen-year-old Margot Allan, a respectable vicar's daughter, fell passionately in love. But she lost her fiancé, Harry, to the Great War. In turn, she gained a desperate secret, one with the power to ruin her life and her family's reputation, a secret she guards at all costs. Now Margot's family is gathering at the vicarage for the first time since the War ended. And Harry, it turns out, isn't dead. He's alive and well, and looking for answers.
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As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager's life. Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe. But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all. Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are--not a war, but a revolution--and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria's freedom.
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Kent State
Told from different points of view--protesters, students, National Guardsmen, and "townies"--recounts the story of what happened at Kent State in May 1970, when four college students were killed by National Guardsmen, and a student protest was turned into a bloody battlefield.
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We are Your Children Too: Black Students, White Supremacists, and the Battle for America's Schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia
In 1954, after the passing of Brown v Board, one county in southern Virginia chose to close its public schools rather than integrate. Those public schools stayed closed for five years. This was the reality of the people of Prince Edward County. When the affluent white population of Prince Edward County built a private school-for white children only-they left Black children and their families with very few options. Some Black children were home schooled by unemployed Black teachers. Some traveled thousands of miles to live with relatives, friends, or even strangers. Some didn't go to school at all. But many stood up and became young activists, fighting for one of the rights America claims belongs to all: the right to learn. Revelatory and timely, noted nonfiction author and former educator P. O'Connell Pearson shines a light on this disturbing and important chapter of America's history, with ripple effects that still impact the country to this day.
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The Librarian of Auschwitz
Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust.
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The Black Kids
With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.
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