Historical Fiction

What is Historical Fiction? Historical fiction is fiction set in the past. It contains a rich mixture of fact and fiction.

What is Historical Fiction? Through novels and short stories, an author may combine factual information about time, place, events, and real people of the period with fictional characters, dialogue, and details.

What is Historical Fiction? All of these help you experience what it was like to live during the era when the story takes place.

Characteristics of Historical Fiction Presents a well-told story that doesn’t conflict with historical records Portrays characters realistically Artfully folds in historical facts Avoids stereotypes and myths

More Characteristics . . . Believable setting and characters Plot supported by historical evidence Tells a compelling story first and relates historical information second

In 1925, fourteen-year-old Ida Bidson secretly takes over as the teacher when the one-room schoolhouse in her remote Colorado area closes unexpectedly.

Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his horror that he is on a slaver and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo.

Story of an African-American family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s, whose children do not understand the prejudice and discrimination aimed at them.

Philip, an adolescent white boy who is blinded in a torpedo attack at sea during World War II, acquires a new type of vision, courage, and love when he is stranded on a tiny Caribbean island with Timothy, a kind, elderly black man.

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.

Thirteen-year-old Koly enters into an ill-fated arranged marriage and must either suffer a destiny dictated by India's customs or find the courage to oppose tradition.

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African-American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

In 1687 in Connecticut, Kit Tyler, feeling out of place in the Puritan household of her aunt, befriends an old woman considered a witch by the community and suddenly finds herself standing trial for witchcraft.

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Prince Brat deserves his name--he causes trouble at every possible opportunity. Luckily for him it's forbidden to strike a prince, so the palace keeps a whipping boy. Jemmy, plucked from the sewers to become the royal whipping boy, dreams of returning to his life as a rat-catcher. One night the prince decides to run away and orders Jemmy to join him. The two boys embark on a comical series of misadventures that include two murderous highwaymen, a dancing bear, and a journey through the rat-infested sewers beneath the city.

Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

Thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel from their Illinois farm to Chicago in 1893 to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World's Columbian Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-changing experience for everyone.

Told in the voices of eleven characters, about two young girls, one Jewish and the other African-American, who come to the attention of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan in a small Vermont town in 1924.

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

Dear America Diary Series

Twelve-year-old Amber Billows, upset to be moving once again to follow her father's reporting job, cannot help loving Hawaii, but the peace of her tropical paradise is shattered on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

Thirteen-year-old C.J. records in a journal the conditions of the Dust Bowl that cause the Jackson family to leave their farm in Oklahoma and make the difficult journey to California, where they find a harsh life as migrant workers.

Thirteen-year-old Madeline's diaries for 1941 and 1942 reveal her experiences living on Long Island during World War II while her father is away in the Navy.