Published by Simon and Schuster

Summary:  When the potato crop fails for a second time in the fall of 1846, 12-year-old Lorraine and her family face a potentially deadly winter.  By November, they’re subsisting on cabbage and kale, and fever has hit their neighbors.  A chance meeting with the landlord’s daughter Susanna results in a sort of friendship between the two girls.  Susanna has been raised to believe that the Irish are lazy and complaining; Lorraine tries to convince her that their suffering is real.  Eventually Susanna comes up with a plan that provides Lorraine’s family and neighbors with some much-needed food.  It’s enough to get at least some of them through the winter, but before spring comes, tragedy has hit Lorraine’s family and many others.  Some families decide to take their chances on starting new lives in Scotland or North America, but in the end, Lorraine and her parents choose to stay in the country that they love.  Includes a glossary of Irish words, bibliography, and an extensive timeline of the history of Ireland.  259 pages; grades 5-8.

Pros:  Readers will gain a clearer understanding of the history of Ireland and how prejudice played a large role in the tragedies that unfolded there in the mid nineteenth century.  Lorraine is a plucky narrator whose strength and love for Ireland shines through her difficult story.

Cons:  Much of the story is unrelentingly grim, unavoidable when writing about a period of famine and disease.  It’s hard to determine a recommended age group; a 12-year-old narrator suggests elementary, but the nature of the story may make it more appropriate for middle school and up.

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Published by Scholastic Press

Summary:  “Little” Charlie Bobo (at age 12, he’s over six feet tall) believes the Bobo family has terrible luck.  After his sharecropper father dies in a freak accident, Charlie and his mother are at the mercy of Cap’n Buck, the terrifying overseer from the nearby Tanner plantation. When the captain tells Charlie and his mother that they owe him fifty dollars, Charlie has no choice but to join him on a journey to repay their debt.  He tells Charlie he’s in search of thieves who stole thousands of dollars nearly a decade ago; the “thieves” turn out to be fugitive slaves who escaped to Michigan.  When Charlie and the captain reach Detroit, they track down the couple who escaped, but their son, also 12 years old, is at boarding school in Canada.  Leaving the parents in jail, Charlie and Buck travel north, only to find that the attitude toward slave catchers is a bit different in Canada than in the U.S.  Charlie returns to Detroit alone, and discovers that he can’t bring himself to carry out his original mission.  He learns he has a kindness and courage that he’s never recognized before as he helps the family reunite in Buxton, Canada.  256 pages; grades 5-8.

Pros:  Yet another masterpiece of historical fiction from Christopher Paul Curtis.  Charlie is an uneducated narrator who doesn’t always trust his interpretation of events, but has enough heart to begin to question the adults around him and to do the right thing in the end.

Cons:  Kids may need some guidance with the dialect and overt racism of Charlie’s world.

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Published by Candlewick

Summary:  When 13-year-old Lora announces that she wants to leave school for a year to become part of the volunteer army teaching literacy in Castro’s new Cuba, her parents are completely opposed.  However, her abuela speaks up in her favor, and ultimately Lora is allowed to go.  The young people who go with her are under constant threat from rebels hiding in the mountains who want to see the program fail.  Lora almost decides to quit and go home a few times, but her host family and the new friends around her keep her resolve strong, and eventually all her students are reading.  At the end of the year she returns home, but her life has been changed forever.  An epilogue tells readers what happened to Lora and the people she taught; a lengthy author’s note tells more about the history of Cuba, the brigadistas, and the success of the literacy program.  160 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  Readers will be inspired to learn how one person can make a difference–and one who is close to their own age, no less.  It was interesting to read about Castro’s rise to power and his ideals for Cuba from the point of view of Cubans.

Cons:  The story starts off a bit slow, with the pace picking up when Lora is on her way with the brigadistas.

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Published by Dial Books for Young Readers

Summary:  Picking up right after The War That Saved My Life ended, the story begins in the hospital where Ada is awaiting an operation on her clubfoot.  The surgery is successful; shortly afterward, Ada and her brother Jamie get the news that their abusive mother is dead, killed by a German bomb.  Susan is now the children’s legal guardian, and she moves the family into a cottage on Lord and Lady Thorton’s property.  Before long, Lady Thorton is forced to join them.  Susan needs a job, and Lord Thorton finds her one, tutoring Ruth, a Jewish refugee from Germany who is studying for her entrance exams for Oxford.  At first, everyone is unwelcoming to Ruth, unwilling to trust anyone who is German, but slowly she becomes a part of the makeshift family.  The inevitable tragedies of war teach Ada about courage, trust, and love, as she slowly starts to heal the scars from the years with her mother, and learns to embrace her new family and home.  400 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  Here’s that rare sequel that is every bit as good as the first one.  So many memorable characters, all of whom must deal with multiple heartbreaks from the war, but do so with courage and grace.  Carve out some time before opening this up; it’s hard to put down once you start.

Cons:  Although this book is every bit as deserving of Newbery recognition as The War That Saved My Life, I would be surprised if the committee gives another award for the sequel.

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Published by Carolrhoda

Summary:  Auma dreams of attending high school on a track scholarship and eventually becoming a doctor.  She’s at the top of her class, the fastest runner on the track team, and her father is earning good money in Nairobi to help his wife and four children back in their small Kenyan village.  One day he returns home unexpectedly, though, and before long, it’s clear he is too sick to work.  Like so many other adults in Auma’s village, her father wastes away and eventually succumbs to a mysterious disease.  Eventually, Auma learns more about AIDS, the disease that takes her mother within a year of her father’s death.  Determined to escape this fate herself, she refuses the marriages her grandmother tries to arrange, and gets a scholarship to one of the best high schools in her province.  After a year at school, though, her younger siblings are malnourished and doing poorly academically.  Auma decides to take time off from her own studies to work in Nairobi.  The story ends with her on the bus to the city.  Although her dreams have been deferred, it’s obvious she is determined not to let go of them completely.  An author’s note tells of her childhood in Kenya and current work with HIV/AIDS orphans in that country.  304 pages; grades 6-8.

Pros:  An inspiring story of Auma’s courage and strength to overcome incredibly daunting obstacles including poverty, disease, and a society that does not value girls and women.  Readers will learn about a world that is very different than most of their experience, and will come to have a better understanding first world problems versus third world ones.

Cons:  Some reviews recommend this starting at grades 4 and 5, but I would be hesitant to put it in my elementary library.  Auma thwarts a would-be rapist, and there are some pretty detailed descriptions of the sexually-transmittable aspect of AIDS.

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