Lists and Suggestions for Kids

It's 1918, and war is everywhere. John's father is fighting in the trenches far away in France, while his mother works in a menacing munitions factory just along the road. His teacher says that John is fighting, too, that he is at war with enemy children in Germany. One day, in the wild woods outside town, John has an impossible moment: a dreamlike meeting with a German boy named Jan. John catches a glimpse of a better world, in which children like Jan and himself can one day scatter the seeds of peace.--

Victoria (Tory) Blaisdell longs to live a life as adventurous and independent as that of her heroine, Jane Eyre. When Tory's father loses his job and decides to seek a share of the newly discovered gold in California, Tory stows away on the westbound ship carrying her father and younger brother, Jacob. Though San Francisco is mud-caked, frenzied, and full of wild and dangerous men, Tory quickly finds friends and independence - until her father leaves for the gold fields and the care of Jacob falls to her. Then Jacob vanishes, kidnapped, perhaps hidden among the hundreds of ships - called Rotten Row - that have been abandoned in the bay. If he is there, Tory must find him in a treacherous search. Tory comes close to losing everything in her quest for her own and her brother's freedom.

Patryk and Jurek are as much friends as rivals in the small Russian-occupied Polish village where they live. When, in August 1914, Patryk finds an old button on the forest floor, Jurek becomes wildly jealous. Not long after, World War I comes to Poland, bringing one invading army after another to the village. Jurek devises an exciting dare among the seven boys in their pack: whoever steals the best military button will be Button King. The boys agree. The contest is on. The competition escalates from stealing uniform buttons on a wash line to looting the bodies of dead soldiers to setting up an ambush. Leading the charge is Jurek, who will do anything to be Button King. It's only Patryk who tries to stop Jurek's increasingly dangerous game before it leads to deadly consequences.

At the start of World War II, Japanese-American third-grader Aki Munemitsu and her family are sent to an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, while Mexican-American third-grader Sylvia Mendez's family leases their Orange County, California, farm and begins a fight to stop school segregation.

In Stillwater, Mississippi, in 1955, thirteen-year-old African American Rose Lee Carter looks to her family and friends to understand her place in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Her friend Shorty wants to change things by meeting violence with violence; her best friend Hallelujah believes in the power of peaceful protests. Can one girl make a difference?

"Sixteen-year-old Noah Daniels wants nothing more than to fight in George Washington's Continental Army, but an accident as a child left him maimed and unable to enlist. He is forced to watch the Revolution from his family's hard scrabble farm in Upstate New York--until a violent raid on his settlement thrusts him into one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution, and ultimately, face to face with the enemy."--Amazon.com.

This time Ranger, the time-travelling Golden retriever finds himself transported to the deck of the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941, where he rescues the young sailor Ben Hansen who is badly burned when the ship explodes--and there is a Japanese-American boy and girl in a rowboat who also need his help to find their father amid the chaos of the

In 1864 twelve-year-old former slave Charlotte is lucky enough to live on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia, owned by a Miss Van Lew, who hates slavery, and when Charlotte overhears a conversation she realizes that her mistress is gathering information and passing it on to the Union army; Charlotte is eager to help, (especially since her own cousin, Mary, is involved) but her enthusiasm may endanger them all--or help free 400 Union soldiers who are being moved from Richmond further south.

The battlefield was soaked in blood. Screams of injured soldiers rang through the air. Eleven-year-old Nathaniel Fox knelt behind a rock, his gun clutched in his shaking hands. Nate had been heading to New York City to find his father. But now he was trapped in a terrible gunfight between American and British troops. -- But King George was like a snake with America gripped in his fangs - and he didn't want to let go. So now it was war - brutal, bloody war. And America was being crushed by the mighty British army. Thousands of American troops were either dead or dying in filthy British prison ships. General George Washington's army was in tatters. All Nate wanted was to find his father ... and to get out of here alive.

"Martha Tom knows better than to cross the Bok Chitto River to pick blackberries. The Bok Chitto is the only border between her town in the Choctaw Nation and the slave-owning plantation in Mississippi territory. The slave owners could catch her, too. What was she thinking? But crossing the river brings a surprise friendship with Lil Mo, a boy who is enslaved on the other side. Then Lil Mo discovers that his mother is about to be sold and the rest of his family left behind. But Martha Tom has the answer: cross the Bok Chitto and become free. Crossing to freedom with his family seems impossible with slave catchers roaming, but then there is a miracle -- a magical night where things become unseen and souls walk on water. By morning, Lil Mo discovers he has entered a completely new world of tradition, community, and.. a little magic. But as Lil Mo's family adjusts to their new life, danger waits just around the corner. In an expansion of his award-winning picture book Crossing Bok Chitto, acclaimed Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle offers a story that reminds readers that the strongest bridge between cultures is friendship." --

It is 1970 in Red Grove, Alabama, and at Lu Olivera's school the white kids and black kids sit on different sides of the classroom. Six-grader Lu just wants to get along with everyone, but growing racial tensions will not let Lu stay neutral about the racial divide in school. Her old friends have been changing lately--acting boy crazy and making snide remarks about Lu's newfound talent for running track. Lu's secret hope for a new friend is fellow runner Belinda Gresham, but blacks and whites don't mix. Will Lu find the gumption to stand up for what's right? And find friends who will stand with her?