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. In 1970s Ohio, Lenny and her younger brother, Davey, who suffers from a rare form of gigantism, cope with his declining health by poring over each installment of Burrell's Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia Set. Grade: 4+
Chld fiction book, e-book, and e-audiobook. Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, and e-book. In rural Minnesota in 1974, thirteen-year-old Pride Star, raised to be independent, must accept help from friends and neighbors to care for eleven-year-old Nightingale and six-year-old Baby when her grandfather is hospitalized with a brain infection. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book. In 1977 San Francisco, Julie wants to be just like her new friend Carla, until she discovers that Carla is either in big danger or telling big lies. Part of the American Girl series. Grade: 3+
Child fiction book, e-book, and e-audiobook. Cash, Fitch, and Bird Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main. And Bird, his twelve-year-old twin, dreams of being NASA's first female shuttle commander. The Thomas children exist in their own orbits, circling a tense and unpredictable household, with little in common except an enthusiastic science teacher named Ms. Salonga. As the launch of the Challenger approaches, Ms. Salonga gives her students a project; they are separated into spacecraft crews and must create and complete a mission. When the fated day finally arrives, it changes all of their lives and brings them together in unexpected ways. Grade: 4+
Child fiction book, e-book, and audiobook on CD. In the summer of 1984, twelve-year-old Ebony-Grace of Huntsville, Alabama, visits her father in Harlem, where her fascination with outer space and science fiction interfere with her finding acceptance. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book. When Linus Muller takes over making deliveries for his family's Manhattan grocery store in 1943, including bringing a crate of oranges every other week to an artist (Mondrian) from Europe, the two become friends as they discuss war, the future, freedom, and imagination. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book, e-book, audiobook on Playaway, and e-audiobook. Feeling deprived all her life of schooling, friends, mother, and even her name by her twin sister, Louise finally begins to find her identity. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book. In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface. Includes recipe for apple spice cake. Grade: 5+
Child fiction book, and audiobook on CD. Gabriel, twelve, gains new perspective when he becomes friends with Meriwether, a Black World War II hero who has recently returned to the unwelcoming Jim Crow South. Grade: 5+