Historical Fiction

Jacket	Title/Author	Annotation	Grade Level*
	Badger Boy by Elmer Kelton	Returning home at the end of the Civil War, Texas ranger Rusty Shannon captures Badge Boy, a white child who was taken from his murdered parents to live with the Comanche, just as had been Rusty himself. Gunsmoke, honor, dust, and uncertainty as the Confederacy collapses.	10-12
	The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak	Liesel and her foster parents scratch out a meager existence in World War II Germany. When she encounters something she can't resist, books, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with neighbors and with the Jewish man taking refuge in her basement.	9-12
	A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor by Harry Mazer	On a fateful day in Honolulu, young Adam Pelko defies his father's rule to stay away from his Japanese friend Davi Mori. From a fishing boat the two boys witness the horrific bombing and later come to know of Lieutenant Pelko's fate.	9-12
	Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined by Linda Crew	In 1903 handsome and charismatic young preacher, Joshua Creffield, enters Corvallis, Oregon, and easily enthralls and captures the minds of the women in town. Most of them becomes members of his Brides of Eden.	9-12
	Copper Sun by Sharon Draper	Two fifteen-year-old girls, one a black slave and the other a white indentured servant, escape the cruelties of their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Mose, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.	9-12
	Full Service by Will Weaver	In the summer of 1965, Paul Sutton, a Minnesota farm boy, takes a job at a gas station in town, where his strict religious upbringing is challenged by new people and experiences.	9-12
	Ghost Boy by Iain Lawrence	Running away from home seeking solace, Ghost, white as chalk and wearing dark glasses, joins the circus and finds a home at last among others considered misfits and freaks in the years after WWII.	9-12
	Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier	When the sixteen-year-old maid, Griet, enters the household of the seventeenth century Dutch painter Vermeer, she becomes his inspiration for painting, which attracts the jealousy of Vermeer's wife and results in a scandal.	10-12
	Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial by Ronald Kidd	When her father hatches a plan to bring publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father.	9-12
	Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende	This exotic sage, framed by the histories of Santiago, Chile and san Francisco, California presents the memoir of Aurora del Valle in a sequel of Daughter of Fortune which began the story of her grandmother, Eliza Sommers.	10-12
	Retrato En Sepia: Una Novela by Isabel Allende	This exotic sage, framed by the histories of Santiago, Chile and san Francisco, California presents the memoir of Aurora del Valle in a sequel of Daughter of Fortune which began the story of her grandmother, Eliza Sommers.	10-12
	The Sand-Reckoner by Gillian Bradshaw	The Kind of Syracuse asks young Archimedes to use his mathematical skill to design machines to defend the city while the king's sister only wants Archimedes to fall in love with her.	10-12
	Soldier X by Don Wulffson	Amidst the horrors of the Russian front in 1944, a wounded sixteen-year-old German soldier assumes the identity of a dead Russian and is transported to a hospital where a lovely nurse's aide, Tamara, discovers the secret of "X" while falling in love with him.	9-12
	Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs	Despite starvation, fear and forced labor, Polish sisters Eva and Rachel survive World War II in a Nazi work camp in Czechoslovakia.	9-12
	Troy by Adele Geras	During the Trojan War, mischievous Eros plays a trick on two sisters, Marpesssa and Xanthe, causing them to fall in love with the same wounded soldier, Alastor.	10-12
	Under the Persimmon Tree by Suzanne Fisher Staples	Najmah, a young Afghan girl, finds herself alone when her father and brother are taken by the Taliban and her mother and infant brother are killed in an air raid. She meets an American-Muslim teacher in Pakistan who is waiting for her doctor husband to return from the war-torn area.	9-12
*Grade level suggestions are based on professional review sources. Some books contain mature themes. Please discuss reading selections as a family.

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