KEY: jP = Picture Books; jZ = 1st and 2nd Grade Readers; jE = 3rd and 4th Grade Readers; JF = 5th Grade and Up

1920's

updated 03/09


Picture Books

Francis, David "Panama" DAVID GETS HIS DRUM
This memoir of jazz musician, David "Panama" Francis, tells of David's early life when he got his first real drum after years of playing with spoons and even chair legs.
2002 32 p.

Henson, Heather ANGEL COMING
Set in the 1920s and inspired by the real history of the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky, this gentle tale of a young girl awaiting a new sibling brings to life a bit of folklore about how angels brought babies up the mountainside.
2005 unpaged

Terasaki, Stanley GHOSTS FOR BREAKFAST
One night, a young boy and his father investigate their frightened neighbors' report of ghosts on a nearby farm.
2002 32 p.


Beginning-to-Read Books

McKerley, Jennifer MAN O'WAR
BEST RACEHORSE EVER

He started off as a wobbly colt, but grew up to be the greatest racehorse of the century. Man O'War set records for speed and lost only one race. This book tells the true story.
2006 47 P.

Standiford, Natalie THE BRAVEST DOG EVER
THE TRUE STORY OF BALTO

Recounts the life of Balto, the sled dog who braved a snowstorm to deliver medicine to Nome, Alaska during a 1925 diptheria epidemic.
1989 unpaged


3rd - 4th Grade Books

Barasch, Lynne RADIO RESCUE
In the 1920's, after learning Morse code and setting up his own amateur radio station, a 12-year-old boy sends a message that leads to the rescue of a family stranded by a hurricane in Florida. Based on experiences of the author's father.
2000 unpaged

Grimes, Nikki TAKIN' ABOUT BESSIE
A biography of the woman who became the first licensed Afro-American pilot.
2002 unpaged

Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie NORA'S ARK
During the Vermont flood of 1927, a girl and her grandparents share their new hilltop house with neighbors and animals.
2005 unpaged

Levinson, Nancy Smiler SWEET NOTES, SOUR NOTES
David, growing up in the 1920's, discovers perserverance is the only way to succeed in learning to play the violin.
1993 54 p.

Ransom, Candice DANGER AT SAND CAVE
When his friend, Floyd Collins, becomes trapped in a cave in Kentucky in 1925, ten-year-old Arly places himself in great danger while trying to help with the rescue operation. (On My Own History) 2000 46 p.

Snyder, Carol IKE AND MAMA AND THE ONE-IN-A-LIFETIME MOVIE
1920. Ike Greenberg and his friends on East 136th Street in the Bronx hear that director D.W. Griffith is shooting a film (it turns out to be WAY DOWN EAST, with Lillian Gish) "only a bike ride away" (at his studio in Mamaroneck, New York), and they decide to earn some extra movie money by acting as extras in the film.
1981 93 p.

Stauffacher, Sue BESSIE SMITH AND THE NIGHT RIDERS
Black blues singer Bessie Smith single-handedly scares off Ku Klux Klan members who are trying to disrupt her show one hot July night in Concord, North Carolina. 1927.
2006 unpaged

Wells, Rosemary and Tom THE HOUSE IN THE MAIL
In 1927, Emily's pa brings home a catalog that will change their lives forever. Inside are pictures of houses - wonderful houses that feature all the latest appliances, including an electric refrigerator, a gas stove, and indoor plumbing. The house will arrive on a freight train, all ready to be assembled!
2002 unpaged


5th Grade and Up

Coleman, Evelyn MYSTERY OF THE DARK TOWER
American Girl History Mysteries
In 1928, when her father tears her and her brother from their mother in North Carolina and takes them to live with aunts in Harlem, 12-year-old Bessie is trapped in a strange place, especially after her father mysteriously disappears.
2000 139 p.

Dudley, David THE BICYCLE MAN
rural Georgia, 1927.Carissa's mother does laundry for white ladies so the two of them can move up north when into their lives rides an elderly white man on a shiny blue bicycle who shows them how to find balance in their lives.
2005 249 p.

Erickson, John DISCOVERY AT FLINT SPRINGS
When Dr. Montrose visits their Texas ranch in the summer of 1927, fourteen-year-old Riley and his twelve-year-old brother Coy are drawn into an archaeological adventure.
2004 150 p.

Erickson, John MOONSHINER'S GOLD
In Canadian, Texas, in 1927, not long after his father's death, Riley and his fiddle-playing grandfather must find a way to save the family ranch from a group of moonshiners and the men behind their operation.
2001 199 p.

Franklin, Kristine GRAPE THIEF
It's 1925 in multi-ethnic Roslyn, Washington, where a twelve-year-old boy has earned the nickname "Cuss" because he can swear in fourteen languages. This coming-of-age story finds Cuss shouldering family responsibility much too soon.
2003 290 p.

Fuqua, Jonathon Scott DARBY
In 1926, 9-year-old Darby Carmichael stirs up trouble in Marlboro County, South Carolina, when she writes a story for the local newspaper promoting racial equality.
2002 238 p.

Glaser, Linda BRIDGE TO AMERICAN
8-year-old Fivel narrates the story of his family's Atlantic Ocean crossing to reunite with their father in the United States, from its derperate beginning in a shetetl in Poland in 1920 to his stirrings of identity as an American boy.
2005 183 p.

Hesse, Karen WITNESS
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.
2001 161 p.

Hoobler, Dorothy LUCK
1920

In 1927 the Dixons move from rural Georgia to Chicago, where Afrcian Americans have more opportunities, and there Lorraine meets a famous movie actress and her little brother Marcus finds that his artistic talents are useful.
2000 143 p.

Houston, Gloria LITTLEJIM'S DREAMS
In 1920 in the mountains of western North Carolina, fourteen-year-old Jim Houston sees his hopes of continuing his education fade when his mother becomes seriously ill and his logger father must deal with the underhanded dealings of outside businessmen.
1997 231 p.

Karr, Kathleen MAN OF THE FAMILY
During the 1920's, life for Istran, the eldest child of a Hungarian-American amily, holds both joy and sadness. 1924 New Jersey.
2000 143 p.

Levine, Gail Carson DAVE AT NIGHT
When orphaned Dave is sent to the Hebrew Home for Boys where he is treated cruelly, he sneaks out at night and is welcomed into the music and culture filled world of the Harlem Renaissance. 1926.
2000 143 p.

Lisle, Janet Taylor BLACK DUCK
Years afterwards, Hart tells the story of how, in 1929 Newport, Rhode Island, his family and his best friend's family were caught up in the violent competition among groups trying to control the local rum-smuggling trade.
2006 252 p.

Lutz, Norma CARRIE'S COURAGE
1923. With a nation convulsed by the civil war, ten-year-old Elise Brannon wants to use her love of acting to make people laugh and forget the depressing news from the battlefields.
2005 141 p.

Myers, Walter Dean HARLEM SUMMER
1925. Mark has a job in a publishing office, but all he wants to do is play his sax. When he makes a delivery for jazz musician Fats Waller, and it goes bad, he gets into trouble with a ganster.
2007 165 p.

Russell, Cynthia MIM AND THE CRIMINAL
A Hoosier Farm Girl Solves A Mystery
Charlie, the boy who had served time for the fire at the fairgrounds, is completing high school at a nearby boarding school. Mim and her friends believe he's reformed, but a new fire at a nearby farm convinces almost everyone in her church and neighborhood that Charlie's up to his old ways.
2002 119 p.

Russell, Cynthia MIM AND THE KLAN
A Hoosier Quaker Farm Family's Story
On her family's Hoosier farm in the 1960s, young Mim learns about the chores and pleasures of country life, and some things about the country that aren't so pleasant...Later in the day, Grams set cousin Karen and me to scraping corn off the cobs into pans.While we worked I told Karen what Gramps and Gram had told me. "The Klan was here in Indiana, not just the South. And it was here in our county- even among church members." "I thought we were past all that bigotry--prejudice." "Karen, I am ashamed to say this is a state that still harbors prejudice. Do you realize we have no black students at Southwood at all? Not one?" "Its true, cousin. I'm not sure there is a black family in this county." Thus begins a mystery that takes these two cousins and their friends and relatives into a shadowy past when Indiana fought a ruthless enemy- the Ku Klux Klan.
1999 122 p.

Tamar, Erika THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN HOME
When their mother can no longer care for them, 11-year-old Deirdre and her brothers board the Orphans' Train for placement with families out west, but Deirdre, a talented singer, finds a different type of family when she joins a traveling vaudeville troupe. 1927.
2000 202 p.

Yep, Laurence DREAM SOUL
In 1927, as Christmas approaches, 15-year-old Joan Lee hopes to get her parents' permission to celebrate the holiday, one of the problems belonging to the only chinese American family in her small West Virginia comunity.
2000 244 p.

Yep, Laurence STAR FISHER
15-year-old Joan Lee and her family find the adjustment hard when they move from Ohio to West Virginia in the 1920's.
1991 150 p.


Teen/Young Adult

Collier, Kristi THROWING STONES
In 1923, in Pierre, Indiana, fourteen-year-old Andy realizes a dream when he makes the high school basketball team, but when an accident keeps him from playing, he ventures into journalism and begins to understand the meaning of sportsmanship.
2006 204 p.