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. Twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason's older brother is a guard on the Freedom Train, which is carrying the Bill of Rights and other documents throughout the country in 1948, but Clyde is also learning about rights and freedom as he is saved from a beating by an African American boy, and later returns the favor when men in their Atlanta suburb decide to show the "Nigras" their place. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book, and e-book. In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book, e-book, audiobook on CD, and e-audiobook. The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book, e-book and e-audiobook. In Queens, New York, in 1969, twelve-year-old Julian Twerski writes a journal for his English teacher in which he explores his friendships and how they are affected by girls, a new student who may be as fast as Julian, and especially an incident of bullying. Grade: 6+
Child fiction book. Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. It's 1962, and it seems the whole country is living in fear. First book in the Sixties Trilogy. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book, e-book, and e-audiobook. Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book, Zomorod, eleven and originally from Iran, (but please, call her Cindy!) tells her story of growing up Iranian in Southern California during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of the late 1970s.Grade: 4+