Russia, early 1900's. After the Great Bellini teaches young Mirette to walk the high wire, she uses her talent to free him from the Czar’s prison, and both resolve to help others become free.
KEY: jP = Picture Books; jZ = 1st and 2nd Grade Readers; jE = 3rd and 4th Grade Readers; JF = 5th Grade and Up
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McCully, Emily | STARRING MIRETTE & BELLINI Russia, early 1900's. After the Great Bellini teaches young Mirette to walk the high wire, she uses her talent to free him from the Czar’s prison, and both resolve to help others become free. |
1997 | unpaged |
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Maltbie, P.I. | PICASSO AND MINOU The artist Pablo Picasso's cat Minou influences him to discontinue his Blue Period style of painting to begin creating works that will sell more quickly. Includes brief notes on Picasso's life and work. Paris, 1909. |
2005 | 32 p. |
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McCutcheon, John | CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES A World War I veteran tells his grandson of his experiences in 1914, when British and German soldiers declared a truce from fighting to celebrate Christmas together. |
2006 | unpaged |
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Propp, Vera | WHEN THE SOLDIERS WERE GONE After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Benjamin leaves the Christian family with whom he had been living and reunites with his real parents who returned from hiding. based on a true story. Benjamin lived from 1942-1945 on a farm near Hengelo, Holland. He was very upset to learn he would have to leave the farm family he loved to live with “strangers.” |
1999 | 99 p. |
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Steiner, Connie | ON EAGLES’ WINGS AND OTHER THINGS After World War II children from various parts of the world arrive in Israel to make it their new home. |
1987 | unpaged |
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Almond, David | THE FIRE-EATERS In 1962 England, despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, as well as enduring abuse at school and the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Burns and his family and friends still find reasons to rejoice in their lives and to have hope for the future. |
2003 | 218 p. |
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Auch, Mary Jane | ASHES OF ROSES 16-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died. |
2002 | 246 p. |
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Bagnold, Enid | NATIONAL VELVET Downs of Sussex, England, prior to 1931. A 14-year-old English girl wins a horse in a raffle, trains it, and rides it in the Grand National steeplechase. |
1949 | 255 P. |
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Dahlerg, Maurine | ESCAPE TO WEST BERLIN In the midst of the tensions surrounding Berlin in 1961, Heidi awaits her thirteenth birthday and the birth of a new brother or sister. However, these exciting events are overshadowed by a possible move and the mounting political unrest. |
2004 | 179 P. |
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Dahlerg, Maurine | PLAY TO THE ANGEL In Vienna in 1938, in the shadow of an increasingly dangerous Nazi Germany, 12-year-old Greta pursues her dream of becoming a concert pianist like her dead brother Kurt, despite a lack of support from her widowed mother. |
2000 | 183 P. |
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Dorros, Arthur | UNDER THE SUN Chronicles the harrowing journey of Ehmet, a thirteen-year-old boy from Sarajevo who gets caught up in the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. 1991-1995. |
2004 | 212 P. |
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Holm, Anne | I AM DAVID Post World War II Europe. David's entire twelve-year life has been spent in a grisly prison camp in Eastern Europe. He knows nothing of the outside world. But when he is given the chance to escape, he seizes it. With his vengeful enemies hot on his heels, David stru ggles to cope in this strange new world, where his only resources are a compass, a few crusts of bread, his two aching feet, and some vague advice to seek refuge in Denmark. Is that enough to survive? David's extraordinary odyssey is drama |
2004 | 239 p. |
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Hunter, Mollie | A SOUND OF CHARIOTS A young girl growing up in Scotland after World War I tried to come to terms with her grief over her father's death and her increasing sense of the passage of time. Sequel Hold on to Love |
1972 | 242 p. |
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Ibbotson, Eva | JOURNEY TO THE RIVER SEA Sent with her governess to live with the dreadful Carter family in exotic Brazil in 1910, Maia endures many hardships before fulfilling her dram of exploring the Amazon River. |
2001 | 298 p. |
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Kullman, Harry | THE BATTLE HORSE 1930. The children on a Stockholm street engage in a modern-day jousting tournament in which the rich are knights and the poor are the horses who bear them. |
1981 | 183 p. |
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Laird, Elizabeth | KISS THE DUST Her father’s involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces 13-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future. 1984. |
1991 | 279 p. |
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Matas, Carol | AFTER THE WAR After being released from Buchenwald at the end of World War II,15-year-old Ruth risks her life to lead a group of children across Europe to Palestine. 1945 based on real events. |
1996 | 115 P. |
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Menick, Stephen | THE MUFFIN CHILD When her parents die in an accident in 1913, 11-year-old Tanya decides to live alone, refusing charity from the people in her village, and supporting herself by selling muffins. The Balkans. |
1998 | 216 P. |
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Meyer, Carolyn | ANASTASIA, THE LAST GRAND DUCHESS A novel in diary form in which the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II describes the privileged life her family led up until the time of World War I and the tragic events that befell them. |
2000 | 220 P. |
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Morpurgo, Michael | TORO! TORO! A young boy in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, distressed to realize that Paco, the bull he has raised since its birth, is going to die in the bullring, decides to give Paco his freedom and follows the animal into the hills just in time to see his family die in a bombing raid on his farm and village. |
2004 | 126 p. |
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Parkinson, Siobhan | KATHLEEN The Celtic Knot 1937. 12-year-old Dubliner Kathleen Murphy is given the chance to take Irish dancing lessons in 1937 and discovers she has a talent for it. |
2003 | 152 p. |
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Pressler, Mirjam | HALINKA While living in a foster home for girls in Germany ust after World War II, 12-year-old Halinka carefully hides her thoughts, feelings, and even her hopes. |
1998 | 214 P. |
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Schnur, Steven | SHADOW CHILDREN While spending the summer on his grandfather's farm in the French countryside, eleven-year-old Etienne discovers a secret dating back to World War II and encounters the ghosts of Jewish children who suffered a dreadful fate under the Nazis. |
1994 | 86 p. |
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Schur, Maxine | SACRED SHADOWS When her German hometown becomes part of Poland after World War I, Lena, a young German Jew, struggles to come to terms with the anti-Semitism and anti-German hatred that seems to be growing around her. |
1997 | 209 P. |
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Turnbull, Ann | NO FRIEND OF MINE Lennie’s family lives in a poor English mining town in 1937, and when he and the son of the wealthy mine owner become friends, Lennie’s feelings of camaraderie are complicated by class conflicts and envy. |
1994 | 218 p. |
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Watts, Irene | FINDING SOPHIE This novel is set in World War II Europe, and tells the story of Sophie, sent from her parents at age seven to live with a family friend in England. After the war is over, seven years later, she struggles to learn where she belongs. |
2002 | 136 p. |
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Whelan, Gloria | ANGEL ON THE SQUARE In 1913 Russia, 12-year-old Katya eagerly anticipates leaving her St. Petersburg home, though not her older cousin Misha – to join her mother, a lady-in-waiting in the household of Tsar Nicholas II, but the ensuring years bring world war, revolution, and undreamed –of changes to her life. |
2001 | 288 P. |
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Whelan, Gloria | THE IMPOSSIBLE JOURNEY Companion to BURYING THE SUN and ANGEL ON THE SQUARE In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege.In 1934, two siblings embark on a journey across Siberia to reunite with their mother, who is a political prisoner. |
2001 | 288 P. |
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Whelan, Gloria | BURYING THE SUN Companion to The Impossible Journey and Angel on the Square In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege. . |
2001 | 288 P. |
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Whelan, Gloria | THE TURNING In the months leading up to the August 1991 coup attempt that resulted in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, a young dancer with the Kirov Ballet struggles to decide whether to defect while on an upcoming trip to Paris. |
2006 | 213 P. |
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Wulf, Linda Press | THE NIGHT OF THE BURNING Still sad and frightened after living in Poland through World War I and the Russian Revolution, twelve-year-old Devorah Lehrman, her younger sister, and other Jewish orphans travel with Isaac Ochberg to South Africa and make a new start. |
2006 | 200 p. |