|
MCK |
A Friendship for Today
(age 10+) by Pat McKissack bigotry ... friendship ... historical In 1954 Missouri, 12-year-old Rosemary Patterson is about to make history as one of the first African-American students to enter the all-white school in her town. When the girl who has shown her the most cruelty becomes an unlikely confidante, Rosemary learns important truths about the power of friendship to overcome prejudice. |
|
FLE |
Walk Across the Sea
(age 10+) by Susan Fletcher historical ... bigotry The first time Eliza sees Wah Chung, he is squatting beside some rocks on the pathway to her island. Eliza's island is the one on which the lighthouse (operated and maintained by her father) stands, sending its beacon of safety to ships at sea. The pathway to the island is a treacherous one, engulfed by water when the tide is high, passable only when the tide is low and reveals the secret life of the sea on the rocks and in the pools that remain. Although Eliza is careful to avoid Wah Chung as he paints among the rocks (after all, he is a Chinaman), when a "sneaker wave" approaches the passage, it is Wah Chung who warns her and then rescues Eliza's goat, Parthenia, before both are swept away. It is a simple act of kindness, but one that causes Eliza to doubt many things. Are the Celestials, as the Chinese immigrants are called, such a threat to their small town? Are they really heathens, as her father claims? And what should she do when the townspeople conspire to expel these people forcibly? How will Eliza act, in the face of her father's strong beliefs and his duties as the lighthouse keeper, when Wah Chung comes to her for help in return? |
|
GRE |
Out of Many Waters
(age 10+) by Jacqueline Dembar Greene bigotry ... family ... adventure ... historical Kidnapped from their parents during the Portuguese Inquisition and sent to work as slaves at a monastery in Brazil, two Jewish sisters attempt to make their way back to Europe to find their parents, but instead one becomes part of a group founding the first Jewish settlement in the United States. |
|
HEI |
Precious Gold, Precious Jade
(age 10+) by Sharon Heisel friendship ... historical ... bigotry A young woman befriends a Chinese family despite the racism and fear that overwhelm the residents of her small western mining town at the end of the gold rush. |
|
BUR |
Wrango
(age 10+) by Brian Burks bigotry ... historical ... adventure The War Between the States is over, and George McJunkin and his family are among the slaves who've won their freedom. Trouble is, the McJunkins still live in a tiny shack, and the money George's father brings in barely keeps food on the table. George's parents say the times are changing. They say someday in Rogers Prairie, Texas, there will be a school for black children. They say someday the family will own the blacksmith shop where George's father still toils for the man who used to own them. But George isn't so sure about someday. Between 1867 and 1895, more than five thousand black cowboys helped drive ten million cattle up the Chisholm Trail from Texas. One such cowboy was George McJunkin, who set out from Rogers Prairie for the adventure that would change his life. |
|
YEP |
The Star Fisher
(age 10+) by Laurence Yep bigotry ... historical Fifteen-year-old Joan Lee and her family find the adjustment hard when they move from Ohio to West Virginia in the 1920s. |
|
UCH |
Journey to Topaz: a Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation
(age 10+) by Yoshiko Uchida identity ... survival ... bigotry ... historical After the Pearl Harbor attack, an eleven-year-old Japanese-American girl and her family are forced to go to an aliens camp in Utah. |
|
SPE |
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
(age 10+) by Elizabeth George Speare magic ... bigotry ... historical Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives' stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit's friendship with the "witch" is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft! |
|
SCH |
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
(age 10+) by Gary D. Schmidt bigotry ... friendship ... historical It only takes a few hours for Turner Buckminster to start hating Phippsburg, Maine. No one in town will let him forget that he's a minister's son, even if he doesn't act like one. But then he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a smart and sassy girl from a poor nearby island community founded by former slaves. Despite his father's-and the town's-disapproval of their friendship, Turner spends time with Lizzie, and it opens up a whole new world to him, filled with the mystery and wonder of Maine's rocky coast. |
|
TAY |
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
(age 10+) by Mildred D. Taylor family ... bigotry ... historical The story of one African American family fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s. |
|
TAY |
The Cay
(age 10+) by Theodore Taylor voyages/journeys ... friendship ... bigotry ... adventure ... historical When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, an adolescent white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old black man are stranded on a tiny Caribbean island where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion. sequel: Timothy of the Cay |
|
SPI |
Maniac Magee : a Novel
(age 10+) by Jerry Spinelli folklore ... humor ... bigotry ... realistic ... friendship ... sports After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries. |
|
LOW |
Number the Stars
(age 10+) by Lois Lowry survival ... bigotry ... friendship ... historical In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis. |