Kathryn Lasky

In 1952, when Georgie is eleven years old, her family moves to a new Indiana neighborhood where her teenaged neighbor has polio and is in an iron lung.

In Pompeii, in the summer of A.D. 79, Julia and Sura appear to lead opposite lives. Julia is the daughter of a wealthy ship-builder; Sura is an orphan. Julia bears the Curse of Venus—a withered arm; Sura’s beauty turns heads. Julia is free; Sura is her slave.Then Julia learns that her parents are planning to put her in the service of the Temple of Damia, the center of a cultish new religion, and Sura will be sold to an awful man who plans to make her his concubine.But when Mt. Vesuvius erupts, Julia’s and Sura’s fates are forever altered, forcing them both to face the true meaning of freedom.

"Enraged by his clash with Soren and driven by and all-consuming desire for power, Kludd and his group, the Pure Ones, launch an attack upon the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. The noble owls who live there must fight fiercely to protect their resources and defend their honor."--P. 4 cover.

Describes the life of a pirate, named simply Bob, whose job is to cut the steering cables and cripple the ships he and his shipmates will loot.

good pretty darn good

In 1899, a fifteen-year-old orphan named Hannah obtains employment as a servant in the home of one of Boston's wealthiest families, where she meets a noted portrait painter who seems to know things about her that even she is not aware of, and when she accompanies the family to their summer home in Maine, she feels an undeniable pull to the sea.

In 1903, Maureen, originally from Ireland, comes to Boston to live with her old friend Sofia and her Italian American family, where the two girls share fifth grade class and various adventures.

"As the Revolutionary War rages on, Isabel and Curzon are reported as runaways, and the awful Bellingham is determined to track them down. With purpose and faith, Isabel and Curzon march on, fiercely determined to find Isabel's little sister Ruth, who is enslaved in a Southern state"--

After her family immigrates to America from Italy in 1903, ten-year-old Sofia is quarantined at the Ellis Island Immigration Station, where she makes a good friend but endures nightmarish conditions. Includes historical notes.

Describes the need for sailors to be able to determine their position at sea and the efforts of John Harrison, an eighteenth century man who spent his life refining instruments to enable them to do this

one of the best books i've read.

A biography of an African girl brought to New England as a slave in 1761 who became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as the first Black poet in America.

A mother tells her own daughter what she was like and what she used to do when she was a little girl.

When Lucille is upset that she can not go camping with her father and older siblings, she and her mother decide to go camping inside the house.

Lonely after his two brothers are eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, Dr. Smart Pig invents a wolf-proof friend to keep him company on Halloween.

Young children describe the various things their hands and their mothers' hands do when they are together throughout the different seasons of the year.

Beginning in 1627, Princess Jahanara, first daughter of Shah Jahan of India's Mogul Dynasty, writes in her diary about political intrigues, weddings, battles, and other experiences of her life. Includes historical notes on Jahanara's later life and on the Mogul Empire.

Mary, the young Scottish queen, is sent a diary from her mother in which she records her experiences living at the court of France's King Henry II as she awaits her marriage to Henry's son, Francis.

A fictional journal kept by twelve-year-old Augustus Pelletier, the youngest member of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery.