Presents a novel set in a post-World War Two coal-mining town in Pennsylvania and tells the story of the five Novak children who come of age during wartime.
Fifteen-year-old Frank Kovacs, a Polish immigrant working in the coal mines of eastern Pennsylvania, begins a correspondence with Theodore Roosevelt after he assumes the presidency on September 14, 1901.
One day a stranger comes to claim Billy Creekmore from the Guardian Angels Home for Boys; and he embarks on a cross-country journey in search of his past, his future, and his own true self.
Tired of his twelve-hour shifts and facing danger daily, Bitty, a canary whose courage more than makes up for his small size, treks to the state capital to try to improve working conditions in coal mines.
Examines the dangers behind President George W. Bush's assertion that coal holds the key to America's economic future, discussing the economic challenges America faces and the factors that will lead to a dangerous reliance on coal as an energy source.
Traces the history of coal, discussing how it has been used in different cultures, how it is mined, what negative effects it has had on people, economics, and the environment, and the role it has played in world history and development.
Thirteen-year-old Trina's family left Bohemia for a Colorado coal town to earn money to buy a farm, but by 1901 she doubts that either hard work or hoping will be enough, even after a strange fish seems to grant her sisters' wishes.
In 1859 when Rory disguises herself as a boy in order to work in a coal mine in St. Claire, Pennsylvania, she and her friend struggle to survive a cave-in disaster.
Explores the extent of child labor in the United States in the nineteenth century and reveals how the photography of Lewis Hine and others helped illuminate children's sordid working conditions and bring about the establishment of child labor laws.
