The Devils Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
Level Y
Hannah Stern, an American born Jewish adolescent, is uninterested in her culture, and past of her previous relatives. When she is supernaturally transported back to a Nazi death camp in 1941, she is forced to try to remember everything she can about the Holocaust to help her and her "family" survive.
Level Y
Hannah Stern, an American born Jewish adolescent, is uninterested in her culture, and past of her previous relatives. When she is supernaturally transported back to a Nazi death camp in 1941, she is forced to try to remember everything she can about the Holocaust to help her and her "family" survive.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Level U
As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen’s family takes in Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her as part of the family.
Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.
Level U
As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen’s family takes in Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her as part of the family.
Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Level Z
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
Level Z
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
Jefferson's Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradly
Level X
What does it mean when the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence is your father and also your slave owner?
Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston are Thomas Jefferson's children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. While they do get special treatment, better work, better shoes, even violin lessons, they are still slaves, and are never to mention who their father is. The lighter-skinned children have been promised a chance to escape into white society, but what does this mean for the children who look more like their mother?
As each child grows up, their questions about slavery and freedom become tougher, calling into question the real meaning of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Level X
What does it mean when the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence is your father and also your slave owner?
Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston are Thomas Jefferson's children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. While they do get special treatment, better work, better shoes, even violin lessons, they are still slaves, and are never to mention who their father is. The lighter-skinned children have been promised a chance to escape into white society, but what does this mean for the children who look more like their mother?
As each child grows up, their questions about slavery and freedom become tougher, calling into question the real meaning of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Eyes of the Emeperor by Grahm Salisbury
Level Y
Eddy Okubo lies about his age and joins the army in his hometown of Honolulu only weeks before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Suddenly Americans see him as the enemy--even the U.S. Army doubts the loyalty of Japanese American soldiers.
Then the army sends Eddy and a small band of Japanese American soldiers on a secret mission to a small island off the coast of Mississippi. Here they are given a special job, one that only they can do. Eddy's going to help train attack dogs. He's going to be the bait.
Level Y
Eddy Okubo lies about his age and joins the army in his hometown of Honolulu only weeks before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Suddenly Americans see him as the enemy--even the U.S. Army doubts the loyalty of Japanese American soldiers.
Then the army sends Eddy and a small band of Japanese American soldiers on a secret mission to a small island off the coast of Mississippi. Here they are given a special job, one that only they can do. Eddy's going to help train attack dogs. He's going to be the bait.
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Level AL
Sage Singer is a baker with no friends. Her sisters hate her, her mother is dead, and all she has left is her grandmother. Through her daily going to grief group, she meets a friend who is also a regular customer at the bakery, Josef Weber. They become good friends but then suddenly Josef asks her a very deep favor. To help him kill himself. After that, he starts confessing some of his past secrets, which interfere with Sage's grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Her best friend could potentially be her worst enemy. Through the eyes of five different characters, with different backgrounds and experience all come together because of one problem.
Level AL
Sage Singer is a baker with no friends. Her sisters hate her, her mother is dead, and all she has left is her grandmother. Through her daily going to grief group, she meets a friend who is also a regular customer at the bakery, Josef Weber. They become good friends but then suddenly Josef asks her a very deep favor. To help him kill himself. After that, he starts confessing some of his past secrets, which interfere with Sage's grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Her best friend could potentially be her worst enemy. Through the eyes of five different characters, with different backgrounds and experience all come together because of one problem.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
Sarah's Key
By Tatiana De Rosnay
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
By Tatiana De Rosnay
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
The Two Girls of Gettysburg
By Lisa Klein
Level Z
Lizzie and Rosanna are cousins. But when the Civil War breaks out, Lizzie finds herself committed to the cause of the Union, while Rosie is swept up in the passions of the old south. Torn in their alliances, each girl finds herself grappling with the brutality of war, and the elusive promise of love, until the battle at Gettysburg brings them together once agin.
By Lisa Klein
Level Z
Lizzie and Rosanna are cousins. But when the Civil War breaks out, Lizzie finds herself committed to the cause of the Union, while Rosie is swept up in the passions of the old south. Torn in their alliances, each girl finds herself grappling with the brutality of war, and the elusive promise of love, until the battle at Gettysburg brings them together once agin.
Between Shades of Gray
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.