Angry and humiliated after his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young African-American boy grows in understanding by learning to read and in courage with the help of his devoted dog, Sounder.

After Ben is summoned home from boarding school to care for his father, who has suffered a stroke, he becomes convinced that if the family fulfills the father's dream of building a barn he'll recover.

Twelve-year-old Hannalee Reed, forced to relocate in Indiana along with other Georgia millworkers during the Civil War, leaves her mother with a promise to return home as soon as the war ends.

A view of the incidents at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, which were the start of the American Revolution, as seen from the eyes of George, a British drummer boy.

The journal of a fourteen-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father's remarriage, and the death of her best friend.

This beloved story follows the frontier adventures of Caddie Woodlawn, a tomboy growing up in Wisconsin during the 1860s. More likely to plow than bake, she's the despair of her mother and older sister. But when Indians threaten to massacre the settlers, it's Caddie who saves the day.

As World War II begins, thirteen-year-old Jessie, attending the Alveara boarding school in Belfast, Northern Ireland, begins to suspect that her German teacher is really a Nazi spy.

In San Francisco during the 1850's gold rush, Chang, the son of Chinese immigrants, wants a pony but cannot afford one until his friend Big Pete finds a solution.

The Watson family of Flint, Michigan - Momma, Dad, Joetta, Byron, and ten-year-old Kenny - head South to Birminham, Alabama to visit Grandma and come face to face with one of the darkest moments in American history.

Remembering her mother's words, an eight-year-old girl finds courage to go alone with her father to build a new home in the Connecticut wilderness and to stay with the Indians when her father goes back to bring the rest of the family.

After 12-year-old Lucas Whitaker loses his whole family to consumption he learns of a bizarre "cure". When he takes a job as apprentice to the town doctor, he learns about the scientific approach to healing, but seeing so many die, he desperately wants to help other families try the cure that might have saved his family.

After injuring his hand, a silversmith's apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.

Ten-year-old Ann overcomes loneliness and learns to appreciate the importance of her role in settling the wilderness of western Pennsylvania.

A black family tries to unravel the secrets of their new home which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.

When Billie Jo is just fourteen she must endure heart-wrenching ordeals that no child should have to face. The quiet strength she displays while dealing with unspeakable loss is as surprising as it is inspiring. Written in free verse, this award-winning story is set in the heart of the Great Depression. It chronicles Oklahoma's staggering dust storms, and the environmental - and emotional - turmoil they leave in their path. An unforgettable tribute to hope and inner strength.

Bestselling children's book author Gloria Houston celebrates her great-aunt's life. Arizona Houston Hughes lived her entire life in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. It was there that she learned about words, numbers, and faraway places--and it was to there she returned, after being trained as a teacher, to share her indomitable spirit and sense of wonder with generations of school children.

An original creation in the tall-tale tradition, Isaacs' rip-roaring narrative tells of a pioneer woman's transformation into Swamp Angel, summarizes her developing abilities, and focuses on her greatest triumph: the defeat of a marauding bear. Zelinsky, working on cherry and maple veneers, has adapted elements of American folk art; his sense of line matches the exuberance of the text so that the effect is a seamless interpretation.

To Anastasia Krupnik, being ten is very confusing. For one thing, she has this awful teacher who can't understand why Anastasia doesn't capitalize or punctuate her poems. Then, there's Washburn Cummings, a very interesting sixth-grade boy who doesn't even know she is alive. Even her parents have become difficult. They insist she visit her 92-year-old grandmother who can never remember Anastasia's name. On top of that, they're going to have a baby -- at their age! It's enough to make a kid want to do something terrible. Anastasia knows that if she didn't have her secret green notebook to write in, she would never make it to her eleventh birthday.

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think about life before the war. But it's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching in their town. The Jews of Denmark are being "relocated," so Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be part of the family. Then Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission. Somehow she must find the strength and courage to save her best friend's life. There's no turning back now.

In the late 19th century a widowed midwestern farmer with two children - Anna and Caleb - advertises for a wife. When Sarah arrives she is homesick for Maine, especially for the ocean which she misses greatly. The children fear that she will not stay, and when she goes off to town alone, young Caleb - whose mother died during childbirth - is stricken with the fear that she has gone for good. But she returns with colored pencils to illustrate for them the beauty of Maine, and to explain that, though she misses her home, "the truth of it is I would miss you more." The tale gently explores themes of abandonment, loss and love.

In this sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall, a drought threatens the family's stability. Sarah and the two children travel to Maine to visit her aunts -- leaving Jacob behind. Only letters connect them - until, just before school starts, Jacob reappears, and the old bonds are strengthened with the promise of a new baby in the spring. As spare as the original, the book is suffused with joy and, ultimately, hope.

In a suspenseful novel of the underground railroad, Tommy and his father help a family of slaves find their way to Canada.

Anne, an 11-year-old orphan, has arrived Prince Edward Island only to discover that the Cuthberts want to adopt a boy, not a feisty redhaird girl. But Anne who simply must have more scope for her imagination and a real home wins them over.

Until the day his father returns to their cabin in the Maine wilderness, 12-year-old Matt must try to survive on his own. During an attack by swarming bees, Matt is astonished when he's rescued by an Indian chief and his grandson, Attean. As the boys come to know each other, many months pass without a sign of Matt's family. Then Attean asks Matt to join the Beaver tribe.

Facing a year of night riders and burnings, Cassie and her family continue their struggle to keep their land and hold onto what rightfully belongs to them, despite the difficult battles they must continue to endure.

Lois and Wilma are proud of their father's brand-new gold Cadillac, and excited that the family will be driving in it all the way from Ohio to Mississippi. But as they travel deeper into the rural South, there are no admiring glances for the shiny new car - only suspicion and anger for the black man behind the wheel.

Wolves and panthers and bears roamed the deep Wisconsin woods in the 1870's. In those same woods, Laura Ingalls lived with her Pa and Ma and her sisters, Mary and Baby Carrie, in a snug little house built of logs. Pa hunted and trapped. Ma made her own cheese and maple sugar. All night long, the wind howled lonesomely.

Laura and her family leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas. Sometimes pioneer life is hard but Laura and her folks are always busy and happy in their new little house on the prairie.