Did you ever wonder what was it like to live a long time ago? Here's your chance to find out! These books are fiction, meaning that most of the people are made up by the authors, but the authors did a lot of research first to make sure what they wrote was based on things that really did happen! So dive in and find out what it would have been like if you lived in the United States 30, 100, even 300 years ago!
Child fiction book. 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. When Lil Mo discovers that his mother is about to be sold and the rest of his family left behind, 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. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, and e-audiobook. As the only passenger, and the only female, on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, thirteen-year-old Charlotte finds herself caught between a murderous captain and a mutinous crew. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book. Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s. Grade: 5+
Chid fiction book. During the War of 1812, when British soldiers threaten the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, young Rebecca Bates and her sister Abigail, daughters of the local lighthouse keeper, find a way to save both him and the town. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, e-book, and audiobook on CD. Determined to find his nineteen-year-old uncle and best friend, Jesse, who left for Colorado to find enough gold to pay the mortgage and save the family's Iowa farm, twelve-year-old Early Whitcomb joins up with a barber, his wife, and his daughter on a wagon train heading for the gold fields near Pike's Peak in 1858. Part of the I Witness series. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book, audiobook on CD, and e-audiobook. Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. For as long as Omakayas can remember, she and her family have lived on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Although the chimookoman, white people, encroach more and more on their land, life continues much as it always has. Every summer the family builds a new birchbark house; every fall they go to ricing camp to harvest and feast; they move to the cedar log house before the first snows arrive, and celebrate the end of the long, cold winters at maple-sugaring camp. In between, Omakayas fights with her annoying little brother, Pinch, plays with the adorable baby, Neewo, and tries to be grown-up like her beautiful older sister, Angeline. But the satisfying rhythms of their lives are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever. Book 1 in the Birchbark House series. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, audiobook on CD, and e-audiobook. After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book. and e-audiobook. When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay. Book 1 in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, and e-audiobook. 13-year-old Tom Carroll takes a job at a Brooklyn ironworks after his father is killed. Tom learns that the men are building a ship from iron to be used by the Union Army against the Confederate ironclad called the "Merrimac." Tom's job as an assistant to Captain John Ericsson, the inventor of the Monitor, makes him a target of Confederate spies. Illustrated with period photos, drawings, and maps. Part of the I Witness series. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book, and audiobook on CD. While trying to transport food to Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, fourteen-year-old Johnny is captured by a black Union soldier. Grade: 6+
Child fiction book, audiobook on CD, and e-audiobook. Also available in large print in the Adult collection. During his service in the Civil War a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war. Grade: 6+
Child fiction book. With their mother dead and their home burned, a thirteen-year-old boy and his little sister set out across Virginia in search of relatives during the final days of the Civil War. Grade: 5+