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Reviews

Reviews

by Deborah Kops - Biography, History, Nonfiction, Young Adult 11+

Here is the story of extraordinary leader Alice Paul, from the woman suffrage movement --- the long struggle for votes for women --- to the “second wave,” when women demanded full equality with men. Paul made a significant impact on both. She reignited the sleepy suffrage movement with dramatic demonstrations and provocative banners. After women won the vote in 1920, Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would make all the laws that discriminated against women unconstitutional.

written by Michel Chikwanine and Jessica Dee Humphreys, illustrated by Claudia Davila - Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, Young Adult 10+

Michel Chikwanine was five years old when he was abducted from his schoolyard soccer game in the Democratic Republic of Congo and forced to become a soldier for a brutal rebel militia. Against the odds, Michel managed to escape and find his way back to his family, but he was never the same again. After immigrating to Canada, Michel was encouraged by a teacher to share what happened to him in order to raise awareness about child soldiers around the world. This book, presented in a graphic novel format, is part of that effort.

by Georg Rauch - Nonfiction, Young Adult 12+

As a young adult in wartime Vienna, Georg Rauch helped his mother hide dozens of Jews from the Gestapo behind false walls in their top-floor apartment and arrange for their safe transport out of the country. Then came the day he was drafted into Hitler's army and shipped out to fight on the Eastern front as part of the German infantry. Thus begins the incredible journey of a 19-year-old thrust unwillingly into an unjust war, who must use his smarts, skills and bare-knuckled determination to stay alive in the trenches.

by Laura Rose Wagner - Fiction, Young Adult 14+

HOLD TIGHT, DON'T LET GO follows the vivid story of two teenage cousins, raised as sisters, who survive the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. After losing the woman who raised them in the tragedy, Magdalie and Nadine must fend for themselves in the aftermath of the quake. The girls are inseparable, making the best of their new circumstances in a refugee camp with an affectionate, lively camaraderie, until Nadine, whose father lives in Miami, sends for her but not Magdalie.

by Candace Fleming - History, Nonfiction, Young Adult 12+

Here is the tumultuous and heartrending true story of the Romanovs --- at once an intimate portrait of Russia's last royal family and a gripping account of its undoing. Using captivating photos and compelling first person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming deftly maneuvers between the imperial family’s extravagant lives and the plight of Russia's poor masses.

by Emily Arnold McCully - Biography, History, Nonfiction, Young Adult 12+

Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.

by David Klass - Fiction, Young Adult 12+

As a teen, Daniel Pratzer's father was one of the most promising chess players in America. But the pressures of the game pushed him too far, and he gave up chess. Now, 30 years later, Mr. Pratzer returns to the game to face down an old competitor and old demons. Daniel was looking for acceptance --- but his father's secrets will force him to make some surprising moves himself.

by David L. Dudley - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult 14+

Thirteen-year-old Cy Williams has always known that he and the other black folks on Strong's plantation have to obey white men, even though he's free. Almost four years later, Cy yearns for that freedom, such as it was. Now he's a chain gang laborer, forced to do backbreaking work, penned in and shackled like an animal, brutalized, beaten and humiliated by the boss of the camp and his hired overseers. Cy is sure that a chance at freedom is worth any risk, any sacrifice.

by M. Evelina Galang - Fiction, Young Adult 12+
Angel has just lost her father, and her mother's grief means she might as well be gone too. She has a sister and a grandmother to look out for, and a burgeoning consciousness of the unfairness in the world --- in her family, her community and her country.