@ Your Library
Happy November! Two months left in 2024. Be sure to get out and vote on Tuesday, November 5th and let your voice be heard. Take your kids with you and have them see you participating in civic affairs.
Today I’m going to share a bunch of historical fiction titles including several for youth and teens that adults will enjoy as well. If you watched the PBS series “The Bletchley Circle” you might enjoy The Bletchley Riddle by two masters of writing Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. The story is told in alternating chapters by Jakob and Lizzie, a brother and sister duo whose mother went to Poland and vanished and their father has also vanished. They are both recruited to work at Bletchley Park Jakob as a mathematician, Lizzie too must sign papers swearing her to secrecy, but what will she be doing? Another Ruta Sepetys novel is I Must Betray You about Romania in 1989 which asks tough questions about the cost of freedom.
The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree by Lucille Abendanon is also set in World War II, but this time in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. Emmy’s father wants to send her to singing school in England for safety but she wants to stay with her best friend Bakti. Then Emmy is captured when the Japanese invade the island. She will need all her strength to survive the war, find her voice and reclaim her freedom.
Sandra Dallas has written several historical fiction novels including Hardscrabble about a family starting over in Colorado after losing their Iowa farm. It is 1910 and they have to live on the land for five years and farm it and all 320 acres will be theirs. But farming is hard work and natural disasters threaten their success. Someplace to Call Home also by Ms. Dallas is set in the Great Depression and Dust Bowl as three kids try to find a way to live and stay together.
Combine mystery with history in Johan Rundberg’s titles about a Swedish orphanage in 1880 Stockholm, The Night Raven and The Queen of Thieves. Mika will do everything she can to keep everyone at the orphanage safe, but will it be enough?
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been retold twice recently in James by Percival Everett and in Adventures of Mary Jane by Hope Jahren. Travel down the Mississippi in pre-Civil War America and discover what life was like respectively for African American men and strong-headed girls striking out on their own.
Stacey Lee has written an interesting story called Luck of the Titanic about two British-Chinese twins who want to make their acrobatic training a ticket to a better life after stowing away on the Titanic.
And while we are looking for a better life try Buffalo Flats by Martine Leavitt about a young woman traveling from Utah to the Northwest Territories in Canada where her family is establishing a new community with other Latter-Day Saints.