Bornstein, Ruth

BUTTERFLIES AND LIZARDS, BERYL AND ME In 1936, 11-year-old Charlotte and her mother move to tiny Valley Junction, Missouri, where Charlotte befriends an eccentric old woman in spite of her mother's and others' warnings.

2002

144 p.

Burch, Robert

CHRISTMAS WITH IDA EARLY Sequel to: Ida Early comes over the mountain Ida Early, who keeps house for the Sutton family in rural Georgia during the Depression, becomes the unwitting target of the children's matchmaking schemes during the holiday season.

1983

157 p.

Burch, Robert

IDA EARLY COMES OVER THE MOUNTAIN Tough times in rural Georgia during the Depression take a lively turn when spirited Ida Early arrives to keep house for the Suttons.

1980

145 p.

Capote, Truman

THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR A boy recalls his life with an elderly relative in rural Alabama in the 1930's and the lesson she taught him one Thanksgiving Day about dealing with a bully from school.

1995

unpaged

Carter, Dorothy

GRANDMA'S GENERAL STORE THE ARK In the 1930s when their parents go north to Philadelphia to find work, five-year-old Pearl and seven-year-old Prince must stay behind with their grandmother in Florida and help her run her small store.

2005

135 p.

Chipman, Liz

FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE In 1938, thirteen-year-old Louise Bloom tries to figure out what caused her mother to leave her, her three brothers, their father, and the lighthouse on the Hudson River that they call home.

2004

193 P.

Cochrane, Patricia

PURELY ROSIE PEARL

1996

135 P.

Curtis, Christopher Paul

BUD, NOT BUDDY 2000 Newbery Award Winner Bud holds all the remnants of his once loving home in a cardboard suitcase as he walks from Flint to Grand Rapids, Michigan in search of a man he believes to be his father. Many people lend a hand especially a labor union leader who finds Bud hiding at the side of the road.

1999

245 p.

DeFelice, Cynthia

NOWHERE TO CALL HOME When her father kills himself after losing his money in the stock market crash, 12-year-old Frances, now a penniless orphan, decides to hop aboard a freight train and live the life of a hobo.

1999

200 p.

Ducey, Jean

THE BITTERSWEET TIME

1995

109 p.

Durbin, William

THE JOURNAL OF C.J. JACKSON: A DUST BOWL MIGRANT My Name is America A Dear America book April 1935. 13-year-old C.J. records in a journal the conditions of the Dust Bowl that cause the Jackson family to leave their farm in Oklahoma and make the difficult journey to California, where they find a harsh life as migrant workers.

1999

245 p.

Grote, JoAnn

ANNA'S FIGHT FOR HOPE The Great Depression 1931. During the Great Depression, twelve-year-old Anna and her cousin Fred witness much hunger, poverty and despair, and decide to help those in need.

2004

141 p.

Hale, Marian

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPARROWS 12-year-old Sadie promises that she will always be Wilma's best friend when their families leave drought-stricken Missouri in 1933, but once in Texas, Sadie learns that she must try to make a new home, and new friends, too.

2004

260 p.

Hesse, Karen

OUT OF THE DUST 1998 Newbery Award winner In a series of poems, 15-year-old Billie Joe relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

1997

227 p.

Hoobler, Dorothy

DIRECTIONS The 1930's The Century Kids In the summer of 1936, Tony runs away from his home above his family's Italian restaurant in Chicago, while in Berlin, David is present at the Olympics and prepares to move to America.

2000

149 p.

Horvath, Polly

THE HAPPY YELLOW CAR

1994

151 p.

Janke, Katelan

SURVIVAL IN THE STORM THE DUST BOWL DIARY OF GRACE EDWARDS Dear Americaseries A 12-year-old girl keeps a journal of her family's and friends' difficult experiences in the Texas Panhandle, part of the "Dust Bowl," during the Great Depression.

2002

169 p.

Karr, Kathleen

THE CAVE As drought and the Depression are on the verge of driving her family's South Dakota farm to ruin, 12-year-old Christine discovers a wonderful secret: a vast, unexplored cave in the nearby foothills, which has a secret of its own.

1994

165 p.

Koller, Jackie French

NOTHING TO FEAR When his father moves away to find work and his mother becomes ill, Danny struggles to help his family during the Great Depression.

1991

279 p.

Laskas, Gretchen Moran

THE MINER'S DAUGHTER Sixteen-year-old Willa, living in a Depression-era West Virginia mining town, works hard to help her family, experiences love and friendship, and finds an outlet for her writing when her family becomes part of the Arthurdale, West Virginia, community supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.

2007

250 p.

Lasky, Kathryn

CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift Indianapolis, Indiana, 1932 In her fictionalized journal, 11-year-old Minnie Swift recounts how her family dealt with the difficult times during the Depression and how the arrival of an orphan from Texas changed their lives in Indianapolis just before Christmas 1932.

2001

153 p.

Lyon, George

BORROWED CHILDREN

1988

154 p.

Newell, Karen

IN THE SHADOW OF THE PINES 1935. Nine year old Alfred and his family live as sharecroppers in the pine woods of East Texas. Plagued by poverty and hunger, the family also faced illness and land disputes. Should the children work to help buy food for one more day as their father insits? Or should they go to school as their mother wants in order to gain a better future? As circumstances continue to get worse, the family is evicted and moves to a tent in the woods. There an unexpected change awaits them.

2011

168 p.

Pearson, Gayle

THE COMING HOME CAFE In the summer of 1933, fearing that the Depression will never release its stranglehold on her family, 15-year-old Elizabeth Turnquist leaves to ride the rails from town to town looking for work.

1988

197 p.

Peck, Richard

LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO During the recession of 1937, 15-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.

2000

130 p.

Peck, Richard

YEAR DOWN YONDER This 2001 Newbery award winning sequel to LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO brings us back to Grandma Dowdel who rules the town in rural Illinois where she lives. Set in the late 1930s, hard times still prevail here. Joey, the older grandchild, is working in a CCC camp but Mary Alice has come to stay with her grandmother for a year while her parents give up their home.

2000

130 p.

Ray, Delia

GHOST GIRL A Blue Ridge Mountain Story Eleven-year-old April is delighted when President and Mrs. Hoover build a school near her Madison County, Virginia, home but her family's poverty, grief over the accidental death of her brother, and other problems may mean that April can never learn to read from the wonderful teacher, Miss Vest.

2003

216 p.

Recorvits, Helen

GOODBYE, WALTER MALINSKI in 1934, even though life is hard for Wanda Malinski and her family, she enjoys school, good times with her best friend, and a special relationship with her older brother.

1999

85 p.

Ryan, Pam Muanoz

ESPERANZA RISING Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

2002

266 p.

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley

CAT RUNNING When 11-year-old Cat Kinsey builds a secret hideout to escape her unhappy homelife, she slowly gets to know a poor family who have come to California after losing their home in Texas to the dust storms of the 1930's.

1994

168 p.

Swain, Gwenyth

CHIG AND THE SECOND SPREAD Despite her small stature, eight-year-old Chig makes large contributions to her southern Indiana community during the Great Depression.

2003

199 p.

Taylor, Mildred

LET THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN 1977 Newbery Winner. The Logan family owns some land and is respected by others in the African American community but the violence that surrounds them is an ever-present threat. Cassie's innocence is shattered when she makes her first visit to town.

1976

276 p.

Taylor, Mildred

MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE During a heavy rainstorm in 1930's rural Mississippi, a ten-year-old white boy sees a bus driver order all the black passengers off a crowded bus to make room for late-arriving white passengers and then set off across the raging Rosa Lee River.

1976

276 p.

Taylor, Mildred

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY 1977 Newbery Winner. The Logan family owns some land and is respected by others in the African American community but the violence that surrounds them is an ever-present threat. Cassie's innocence is shattered when she makes her first visit to town.

1976

276 p.

Taylor, Mildred

SONG OF THE TREES While Cassie's father, David, is away laying tracks on a railroad in Mississippi, the children see a group of white men marking their beloved trees to chop. Mr. Andersen offers Cassie's grandmother $65 for an unspecified number of trees to cut. She reluctantly takes it, to her daughter-in-law's chagrin. Stacey is sent to Louisianna to bring Papa home to save their trees. He arrives just in time. Set in Mississippi. Based on a true story that happened to the author's family.

1975

48 p.

Uchida, Yoshiko

A JAR OF DREAMS Eleven-year-old Rinko grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the Depression, a time of great prejudice.

1981

131 p.

Willis, Patricia

THE BARN BURNER In 1933, while running from a a bad situation at home and suspected of having set fire to a barn, 14-year-old Ross finds haven with a loving family, which helps him make an important decision.

2000

196 p.

Yee, Paul

BREAKAWAY Life during the Depression is an uphill battle for 18-year-old Kwok-ken Wong. When he's not slogging through chores on his family's struggling farm, he is studying hard to try to win a university soccer scholarship. Vancouver, 1930's.

1996

unpaged