Historical Fiction for Independent Readers
Reading about the past helps your child understand the present. Try these top titles, including both classics and lesser-known gems.
Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis
Join a ten-year-old orphan in his quest to find his jazz musician father in this Newbery Award-winning book set in the 1930s.
Dinosaurs Before Dark
by Mary Pope Osborne
Magic Tree House series
Journey everywhere from the Ice Age to the Old West in this best-selling series about two kids who discover enchanted books that transport them through time.
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
by Bette Bao Lord
Follow 10-year-old Bandit "Shirley Temple" Wong as she finds unique ways to assimilate into her new culture when her family emigrates from China to Brooklyn in 1947.
The Midwife's Apprentice
by Karen Cushman
Full of period details and witty dialogue, this medieval tale introduces Alyce, a young nobody who discovers a way to make something of herself.
Westward to Home
by Patricia Hermes
My America series
It is 1848 when Joshua McCullough and his family leave their home in St. Joseph, Missouri, and set off for Oregon on a wagon train.
Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry
A sensitive exploration of the Holocaust, this novel set in Denmark shows what happens to a young girl and her friend as the Nazis invade her country.
Satch & Me
by Dan Gutman
Part of the Baseball Card Adventure series that mixes history with a little magic, this book takes a modern-day boy back to the days of Satchel Paige to find out if he truly was as great as people say.
Worth
by A. LaFaye
A beautiful exploration of friendship, this Scott O'Dell Award-winning novel transports readers to the 19th-century Nebraska farmlands.
