Reading Challenge #4: Historical Fiction

As I mentioned in my reluctant readers post, books can be a doorway leading into the vast reading world. Sometimes the book that leads a child into the reading world is a historical fiction book: a book based on real events or people in history but the story itself is fiction. So to help parents, librarians, and readers looking for more great historical fiction, I have listed several books and the historical event or place it is based on to help fuel the reading flame. Enjoy!

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (WWII in Denmark)

The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (WWII in Germany)

Boston Jane series by Jennifer Holms (Early settlement of Washington territory)

Jason’s Gold and Down the Yukon by Will Hobbs (Alaskan Gold rush)

Double Eagle by Sneed B. Collard III (set in 1970’s but searching for Civil War gold)

Elephant Run by Roland Smith (WWII in Burma)

Al Capone Does My Shirts series Gennifer Choldenko (teenage boy living on Alcatrtaz Island)

The Kilpfish Code by Mary Casanova (WWII in Norway)

March Toward the Thunder by Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki Indian fighting in the Civil War)

Don’t You Know There’s a War On? by Avi (WWII in New York)

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi (1830’s London)

Crispin series by Avi (Fourteenth-century medieval England)

Year of Impossible Goodbyes and Echoes of the White Giraffe by Sook Nyui Choi (WWII in Korea and South Korea)

Titanic: The Long Night by Diane Hoh (1912 Titanic disaster)

A Long Way from Chicago series by Richard Peck (series starting from the Great Depression to 1950s in rural Illinois)

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (1930s Dust Bowl)

Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls (1900s rural Oklahoma)

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor (1930s Mississippi)

The Guild of Specialists series by Joshua Mowll (1920s China)

Pie by Sarah Weeks (1950s Pennsylvania)

Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys (1940s Lithuania & Siberia)

Time of the Witches by Anna Myers (Salem Witch Trials)

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (1960s South Carolina)

Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy (WWII in Poland)

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt (Civil War)

Sarah Bishop by Scott O'Dell (Revolutionary War/Early America)

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Salem Witch Trials)

The Youngest Templar series by Michael Spradlin (Crusades in Jerusalem and medieval England)

Island of the Blue Dolphins and Zia by Scott O'Dell (Early Native Americans)

Little Women series by Louisa May Alcott (Civil War America)

The de Granville Trilogy by K.M. Grant (Crusades in Jerusalem)

Out of the Hitler Time series by Judith Kerr (WWII in Germany)

Breathing Room by Marsha Hayles (1940s tuberculosis epidemic in United States)

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (Runaway slave colony in Canada)

Chu Ju's House by Gloria Whelan (traditional China)

Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan (traditional India)

When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park (WWII in Korea)

Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman (Swiss Alps)