F
GRE
Summer of My German Soldier (age 10+)
by Bette Greene
bigotry ... war ... historical
Publisher comments: When her small Arkansas hometown becomes the site of a prison camp during WW II, 12-year-old Patty risks losing her family by dating a German soldier who has escaped in a moving tale about young love.
F
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.
F
KAD
Weedflower (age 10+)
by Cynthia Kadohata
friendship ... bigotry ... historical ... war ... identity
Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to. That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States As suspicions grow, Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new home. Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they'd been at home. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend...if he can ever stop being angry about the fact that the internment camp is on his tribe's land.
F
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.
F
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.
F
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.
F
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.
F
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!
F
PAR
Project Mulberry (age 10+)
by Linda Sue Park
identity ... enterprise ... bigotry ... authorship
Julia Song and her friend Patrick would love to win a blue ribbon, maybe even two, at the state fair. Can they come up with the right plan? Can they see it through? What surprising truths will they discover along the way? We might think we know, but then we wouldn't ask the right questions.
F
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.
F
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
F
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.
F
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.

Walter Hays Elementary School, Sat Aug 25 11:55:30 2012
Other themes and genres