Profiles a variety of picture books that are suitable for students in grade three and higher; includes a summary of the book, information about the art, and suggestions on how to apply the book to classroom curriculum.
Discusses the benefits of using trade book literature in middle school curriculum and profiles specific fiction, nonfiction, and picture books that can be used.
When her father leaves their Massachusetts farm to prospect for gold in California, Sarah must find a way to cope with her mother's cold demeanor and strict discipline and deal with the difficulties of life.
Kate and her brother Jesse are not happy when they have to move from Brooklyn to an old house in Massachusetts after the death of their father, but their newly adopted sister from Korea quickly makes friends with a "blue lady" who helps the family find a way to stay where they belong.
Etta, a twelve-year-old orphan in nineteenth-century Connecticut, meets a boy living in an abandoned cabin on the New Haven and Northampton Canal and has adventures with him while trying to be reunited with her siblings.
In 1864, fifth-grader Charlotte befriends an Irish-American girl at school and tries to understand the prejudices between the Irish and the Yankees in her town of Westfield, Massachusetts. Based on historical events.
In Plymouth Colony in the 1630s, John continually disappoints his father, Governor William Bradford, during a difficult time as the colony faces its first murder and subsequent trial.
A child's two grandfathers relate their boyhood experiences of the "terrible blizzard of 1888," during which each was stuck for three days doing what he disliked the most.
