History & Historical Fiction Books - Page 12

Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables Novels)

L.M. Montgomery

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 311 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Anne of Green Gables 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Book arrived in good condition and in a timely manner. Excellent rating for seller. Would purchase from seller in future.

Editorial Review:

Anne (with an ‘e’ of course) starts out as a mistake. The elderly Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had planned on adopting a boy to help Matthew with the chores on their Prince Edward Island farm. What are they to do with the red-haired, high-spirited girl who arrives instead?

Anne Shirley, with her boundless imagination and heart, slowly brings joy into the narrow lives of those around her, and into the lives of readers who have delighted in her adventures since Lucy Maud Montgomery began writing about her in 1905.

Anne’s courage, her enthusiasm, and her ability to love, have made her one of literature’s most beloved characters in Canada and around the world.

This beautifully illustrated volume, with a foreword by Kate Butler MacDonald, one of L. M. Montgomery’s grandchildren, is a treasure for those who find in Anne a familiar friend as well as for those who are discovering this “kindred spirit” for the first time.

Stones from the River

Ursula Hegi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 332 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Book club choice 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This was my book club's choice last month, and probably not a book I would have picked up on my own. But I enjoyed it. It was a little hard to read with a lot of German words stuck here and here, and a lot of characters to keep track of. But you were rooting for Trudi throughout the book. Got an understanding for what a small person goes through on a regular basis. It also painted a great picture of Nazi occupied Germany, and not only what Jews went through but how good German people did what they needed to, to survive and keep their families alive. I sometimes wondered what was going on in those towns outside the concentration camps and why they didnt ask what was going on..have a pretty good picture now why.

Editorial Review:

From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Floating in My Mother's Palm comes a stunning novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

Trudi Montag is a Zwerg -- a dwarf -- short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share -- from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he's a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar.

Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.

Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove)

Larry McMurtry

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 140 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The epic four-volume cycle that began with Larry McMurty's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Lonesome Dove, is completed with this brilliant and haunting novel - a capstone in a mighty tradition of storytelling.

Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, now in their middle years, are just beginning to deal with the enigmas of the adult heart - Gus with his great love, Clara Forsythe; and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him. Two proud but very different men, they enlist with a Ranger troop in pursuit of Buffalo Hump, the great Comanche war chief; Kicking Wolf, the celebrated Comanche horse thief; and a deadly Mexican bandit king with a penchant for torture.

Comanche Moon joins the twenty-year time line between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove, following beloved heroes Gus and Call and their comrades-in-arms - Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker - in their bitter struggle to protect an advancing Western frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life.

At once vividly imagined and unflinchingly realistic, Comanche Moon is a sweeping, heroic adventure full of tragedy, cruelty, courage, honor and betrayal - and the culmination of Larry McMurty's peerless vision of the American West.

The Courage of Sarah Noble

Alice Dalgliesh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 305 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Courage of Sarah Noble 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I liked this book because it had a lot of words I did not know and learned them.

I would recommend this book to a friend because it is a good book.

What is the best part of the story? The best part of the story is when Sarah found her father.

Why is it important that Sarah's courage always be with her? She had a family with the Indians.

My review 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I disliked the book because there was not that much action because no armies attacked

My review 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I would recommend this book because Sarah is nice and she teaches the Indian children.

Editorial Review:

In 1707, young Sarah Noble and her father traveled through the wilderness to build a new home for their family. "Keep up your courage, Sarah Noble," her mother had said, but Sarah found that it was not always easy to feel brave inside. The dark woods were full of animals and Indians, too, and Sarah was only eight!

The true story of Sarah's journey is inspiring. And as she cares for her father and befriends her Indian neighbors, she learns that to be afraid and to be brave is the greatest courage of all.

The Wild Girls

Pat Murphy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Made me remember why i fell in love with writing 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

i just say i loved this book, which i didnt really expect, because i'm typically not a fan of "coming of age" novels. after reading the mostly stinky Young Adult books that won awards, or were given star reviews by School Library Journal, i have to wonder why this little gem was ignored.

Its characters are very relistic, and it instills a love, or at least an interst in writting in its readers. i loved the writing assignments that they girls were given in their class. i also loved how during the course of the book, both girls learned to see the world for what it is; to see their parents as people and not just parents.

Editorial Review:

It’s 1972. Twelve-year-old Joan is sure that she is going to be miserable when her family moves. Then she meets a most unusual girl. Sarah prefers to be called “Fox,” and lives with her author dad in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. The two girls start writing their own stories together, and when one wins first place in a student contest, they find themselves recruited for a summer writing class taught by the equally unusual Verla Volante. The Wild Girls brilliantly explores friendship, the power of story, and how coming of age means finding your own answers.

Black Duck

Janet Taylor Lisle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Black Duch 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Black Duck is a great piece of historical fiction. It tells the story of the rumrunners off the coast of Rhode Island. Because of the mystery running through it, this book will keep you reading for more to find a surprise at the end. There is a couple of "bad" words in the book, however, I recommend it for 6th through 12th graders, boys and girls.

BLACK DUCK 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Historical fiction either works really well, or it doesn't work at all. Those YA historical fiction novels that deftly capture the distinct essence of a time period and place so different from our own that you can hear the unique cadences in speech patterns and visualize details not even mentioned in the text, those novels are to be treasured and savored more than once because they offer not only a well-told tale, by delicious tastes of bygone eras. Recent novels like AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS and OCTAVIAN NOTHING accomplish these goals heroically; you feel as if you are living in the times and that is part of the emotional journey that we love. YA historical fiction that fails is highly awkward, illogical, anachronistic, and MADDENING. We argue with ourselves about why the author couldn't get it right! The guilty (or at least the current crop) shall remain nameless...

Which leads us to Janet Taylor Lisle's latest. BLACK DUCK is (to maintain the metaphor) an odd bird; it captures that time of the late 1920s nicely, but focuses on perhaps the most unusual of young adult subjects: rumrunning. Told primarily in flashback, BLACK DUCK follows Ruben Hart, a fourteen-year-old from Rhode Island who finds himself (as does most of the rest of the town) involved either directly or peripherally with breaking the law (it is Prohibition, after all). This era is brought to life expertly by Lisle's correct decision to have the story told through a first-person point-of-view. That choice allows her to capture the language, mannerisms and trends of the time quite accurately. Building slowly, she offers plenty of historic detail without the weight of seeming to force the historical information on us (like QUAKE!: DISASTER IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1906 does).

I was also taken with Lisle's characterizations, particularly those of the several characters who made unexpected, yet by-all-means organic choices -- always a joy for an English teacher to read -- that took the plot into unexpected, yet organic places.

Though the historical nature of the book is, as far as I can tell, relatively accurate, it is an incredibly bold move on Lisle's part to make practically all of the characters law-breakers (yes, even many of the kids)! On top of that, the reader and a majority of the characters don't want [SPOILER NOTICE] the legal authority -- in this case, the Coast Guard -- to capture the rumrunners aboard the Black Duck. WOW! And it works... beautifully. To take a questionable subject for young adults and approach it in a highly questionable way, and succeed (!!!) deserves real kudos from YA fans.

As an English teacher, this is a great piece for discussion and analysis -- in part for the above-mentioned reasons, but also for the dramatic structure in which the flashbacks are interrupted by the present and newspaper stories of dates in-between.

So, in the categorization of YA historical fiction that soars and those that sink, this rumrunning ship, heavy with cargo, is definitely buoyant.

Editorial Review:

It is spring 1929, and Prohibition is in full swing. So when Ruben and Jeddy find a dead body washed up on the shore of their small coastal Rhode Island town, they are sure it has something to do with smuggling liquor. Soon the boys, along with Jeddy’s strongwilled sister, Marina, are drawn in, suspected by rival bootlegging gangs of taking something crucial off the dead man. Then Ruben meets the daring captain of the Black Duck, the most elusive smuggling craft of them all, and it isn’t long before he’s caught in a war between two of the most dangerous prohibition gangs.

These Happy Golden Years (Little House)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A GOOD BOOK 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I would rate this book 4.5 stars. It tells of Laura Ingalls years between the age of 15 to 18, and her first teaching job where she goes to live with a family where the wife doesn't treats her shabbily. It's a good story but it mostly told more of her and Almanzo than her teaching.

A wonderful trip back in time 5 out of 5 stars.
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I love most of the Little House on the Prairie books, as well as the stories of Laura's great-grandmother, Martha, her grandmother, Charlotte, her mother, Caroline, and her daughter, Rose. I've read every one I can get my hands on. My all-time favorite of the all the series is These Happy Golden Years. This tells of Laura and Almanzo's courtship, and it is so chaste and sweet.

This book definitely belongs on my 10 favorite children's books.

Editorial Review:

Fifteen-year-old Laura lives apart from her family for the first time, teaching school in a claim shanty twelve miles from home. She is very homesick, but keeps at it so that she can help pay for her sister Mary's tuition at the college for the blind. During school vacations Laura has fun with her singing lessons, going on sleigh rides, and best of all, helping Almanzo Wilder drive his new buggy. Friendship soon turns to love for Laura and Almanzo in the romantic conclusion of this Little House book.

Emperor Mage (The Immortals, Book III)

Tamora Pierce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 117 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Dinos bent on Destruction 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Ever wished you could trash an empiral palace using dinosaurs? Then this book is for you! Animal lovers unite to take out the bad guy.

Ozorne's making trouble! 5 out of 5 stars.
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Daine and her teacher Numair Salamin are sent to Carthak as part of the peace legion. But although Ozorne says that he didn't attack Tortall Daine can tell that he's up to something. She can feel it.

In this book Daine is captured by...sorry I won't tell you. Numair tries to save her and...another thing I won't say. Ozorne is growing powerful and Daine see's her power growing in strange ways. Are these powers good or bad?

While Daine is here she meets Kaddar the prince of Carthak and maybe, just maybe they can do something to stop the war and to defeat Ozorne...

Please read this book. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It has magic, fantasy, action, adventure and a touch of romance.

Editorial Review:

Daine reluctantly sails to Carthak as part of a peace treaty delegation from Tortall. She is to examine the Emperor Orzone's sickly birds. While healing the captive birds, Daine discovers a new and terrifying dimension of her wild magic: She can bring dead creatures back to life. What is she to do with such immense power? Finding out the answer nearly costs Daine her life, but slowly she uncovers the darkness that is coursing through Carthak and the evil that threatens the fate of the peace treaty. As the gods plan vengeance on Carthak for the terrible deeds the empire has committed, Daine must learn to wield her newfound power to thwart their divine retaliation and secure peace for all of Tortall.

On the Beach

Nevil Shute

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 206 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Bleak, gloomy...the end of the world if we're not careful 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The transition from night to day begins each morning with a gentle sunrise insidiously piercing through the unwilling blanket of darkness. Eventually the colossal battle becomes fruitless and night gives in to the increasingly unrelenting pressure of sunshine. In relatively little time the seemingly insignificant temperature rise becomes substantial, creeping its way into life, permeating throughout all that doesn't wilt before the sun's potency. The changes are both irrevocable an inevitable.

The atrocities and horrors of war, specifically the aftermath, are just as apparent as that sunrise. Similarly, the nuclear fallout and resulting widespread death is agonizingly slow.

On the Beach is a tale of the realistic horror that could eventually destroy our planet. For those near the epicenters of full scale nuclear war, death is painless and instant. Those not fortunate enough to suffer a sweet, immediate death, face the realization that death approaches at a snail's pace. As the poison of radiation drifts across the ocean southward towards Australia, a U.S. submarine commander named Dwight Towers has to carry on with his mission, and make sense of the world's military actions.

Dwight meets Moira Davidson, a frisky Australian girl with a wild streak, and along with their married friends Peter and Mary, they go about the gut-wrenching final days of their lives. Dwight holds on to the memory of his life, seeking solace in moderate denial, buying gifts for his wife and children who have no doubt already succumbed to the poisonous radiation. Similarly, Peter and Mary plan a garden for future seasons they will never see. Meanwhile, Moira faces death with a slight chip on her shoulder, and a scowl at what could have been. Eventually the four find a dichotomous comfort in knowing that they have no recourse for survival, living their final days with as much vigor, generosity, and soft smiles as possible.

The real strength of this novel is the character development. By learning about the characters' lives and insecurities, strengths and flaws, as well as their likes and dislikes, a great deal of empathy is elicited. Following their depressingly mundane last days during humanity's failing health and infrastructure sheds light on that which we all take for granted, like the simple pleasures and beauty that can be gained from a good drink, an exhilarating race, or a relaxing day fishing.

Humanity should hope that nothing remotely similar to this novel actually occurs. And, even though I'm sure there would be considerably more chaos than represented in the characters' dignified approach, the slow, somber story development accentuates the truly dreary prospect of a slow helpless death.

Editorial Review:

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off."
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end....

Elephant Run

Roland Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Exciting WWII historical fiction for middle-grade readers 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

ELEPHANT RUN is an exciting, historical adventure novel that will appeal to all middle grade readers (and their parents!). In 1941, Nick Freestone joins his estranged father at the family plantation in Burma to escape the bombs falling on England. Instead of finding refuge, he is plunged into the Japanese invasion of Burma. With the help of his young friend, Mya, Nick tries to learn more about the timber elephants trained on the plantation. Mya, a girl who hopes to become an elephant trainer, or "mahout," barely has time to show Nick around the plantation before Nick's father is taken prisoner by the Japanese. With Japanese soldiers in charge of the family home, Nick becomes an unwilling servant of the Japanese. But there are hidden passageways in the house, and soon Mya and Nick have found a way to escape into the jungle, riding on the back of a much-feared rogue elephant named Hannibal.

For readers who've already exhausted the many books about WWII in Europe, this book offers a view of the war in Asia. While the book is mainly about Nick and Mya, readers will see multi-dimensional Japanese, Burmese, and British characters and learn more about life in Burma before and during the war. Issues of colonialism, foreign exploitation, and the desire for Burmese independence are introduced by the various characters who people the story, but the novel is focused primarily on Nick and Mya's need to escape from their Japanese captors. The elephants are part of the story as well, with Hannibal and Miss Pretty representing some of the many elephants trained to work British plantations in Burma.

Fast-paced action drives this story forward, with historical details supporting the action. Nick's father is sent to work on the infamous Japanese railroad, and the story provides a look inside the labor camps. History never slows the action, but information about the Japanese invasion and Burmese reaction abound in the story. Teachers may want to use this story to draw reluctant readers into learning more about World War II in Asia. Be sure to have a map or atlas handy as you'll want to look up the places named in the story. Readers will be sure to want to learn more about elephants and "mahouts" after reading this novel. War Elephants makes good companion reading.

If you like fast-paced adventure novels, stories of World War II, or historical novels, you'll enjoy this exciting novel. My only complaint was the quick resolution at the end -- I would have liked to read more about Nick's actual escape and journey to Australia, but that would take another novel. Let's hope the author is planning to write more about Nick and Mya!

Editorial Review:

In 1941, bombs drop from the night skies of London, demolishing the apartment Nick Freestone lives in with his mother. Deciding the situation in England is too unstable, Nick's mother sends him to live with his father in Burma, hoping he will be safer living on the family's teak plantation. But as soon as Nick arrives, trouble erupts in this remote Burmese elephant village. Japanese soldiers invade, and Nick's father is taken prisoner. Nick is stranded on the plantation, forced to work as a servant to the new rulers. As life in the village grows more dangerous for Nick and his young friend, Mya, they plan their daring escape. Setting off on elephant back, they will risk their lives to save Nick's father and Mya's brother from a Japanese POW camp. In this thrilling journey through the jungles of Burma, Roland Smith explores the far-reaching effects of World War II, while introducing readers to the fascinating world of wild timber elephants and their mahouts.