Middle Grade
American Historical Fiction
Reading about another time in history helps a reader understand and empathize with people who lived through those times. There are so many excellent choices for American historical
fictions reads. Here are a few of my favorites.
Told from the perspective of a young girl who recounts the
frequent struggles against the dust storms and the resulting crop failures that
bring poverty to a land that is already in the midst of a Great Depression.
Hope is met with despair at every turn, but ultimately she realizes that
survival is a condition within all of us. It is not determined by external
factors. Written in verse.
Hattie, a 16yo, is willed a land claim by her
unknown, deceased uncle, so she leaves her foster home in Iowa and heads to
Montana. She arrives in the middle of winter to find little more than some
land, a shack, a cow and a horse. She has until November to produce a crop that
can pay off the claim or she risks losing the farm.
Anna and Caleb lost their mother at a young age and Jacob,
their father needs a wife to run the household. His advertisement is answered
by Sarah who comes from Maine to the prairie for a trial run as a frontier
wife. Both the children and their father fall head over heels for Sarah and hope
she will stay.
Excellent portrayal of life in New York City during the
American Revolution. Told through the eyes of a slave girl who should have been
freed per the wishes of her recently deceased owner, but instead is sold to a
loyalist couple in New York City who dole out severe punishments for
disobedience. She befriends a slave boy who she ultimately feels compelled to
save at the risk of her own life.
13yo Samuel returns from a hunting trip to find that
his parents and neighbors have either been murdered or taken captive by British
and Indian soldiers. Using his sleuthing skills he figures out that his parents
were spared and sets out in pursuit of them. Along the way, he is hit in the
head with a hatchet, saves a girl from death, encounters a civilian who risks
his life to help Samuel and pulls of a daring rescue of his parents at a
prisoner facility in New York City.
During the American Revolution, many Americans sided with
Britain. Tim’s father is a Loyalist who is crushed when Tim’s older brother,
Sam, decides to fight with the Patriots. During the war, Tim grows emotionally
into a man. He witnesses his father being kidnapped by cowboy bandits and later
the execution of Sam when he is falsely accused of stealing his family’s own
cattle.
16yo Kit Tyler has just left her tropical, island
home in Barbados to live with her Aunt and Uncle in Connecticut. As hard as she
tries, she can’t embrace the harsh Puritan ways of the community. When she
befriends a kind, old women who has been branded as a witch, she knows she is
putting her own reputation at risk. She risks be accused of being a witch
herself.
The Yellow Fever epidemic has hit Philadelphia. There are so
many bodies they must be deposited in mass graves. Mattie Cook hopes that her
family will be spared, but no such luck. Now, she is in a desperate battle to
save her family’s coffee shop and most importantly, her own life.
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