italian americans

As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death.

With the help of her wise old grandmother, twelve-year-old Rosie manages to work out some problems in her relationship with her best friend, Bailey, the boy next door.

Fourteen-year-old Calogero Scalise and his Sicilian uncles and cousin live in small-town Louisiana in 1898, when Jim Crow laws rule and anti-immigration sentiment is strong, so despite his attempts to be polite and to follow American customs, disaster dogs his family at every turn.

Two fourteen-year-old girls, sewing machine operators at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, are caught in the famous Triangle fire of 1911.

"In 1971, twelve-year-old Lucy Rossi's dad returns from Vietnam after losing part of his arm, and her whole family must learn to adjust to a new dynamic, but Lucy's friend Milo unknowingly helps her navigate through this difficult time of fear and uncertainty to realize she is much tougher than she thought"--Provided by publisher.

In 1895 in New York City, Gina, a fourteen-year-old Italian immigrant, forced by her family to drop out of school and work long hours in a garment factory, tries to break free of the control her parents have over her finances and social life.

When she drops out of school and struggles to start a career on Broadway in the fall of 1950, seventeen-year-old Kit Corrigan accepts help from an old family friend, a lawyer said to have ties with the mob, who then asks her to do some favors for him.

As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death.

In a small California town in 1951, twelve-year-old Paolo and his deaf cousin Billy get caught up in a search for money missing from the church collection, leading them to complicated discoveries about themselves, other family members, and townspeople they thought they knew.

It is 1911, and fourteen-year-old Lucia (Lucy) Morelli dreams of going to college, but for the present she lives with her large Italian family in a crowded apartment in New York City, and works as a sewing machine operator in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory bringing home money because her father can no longer work; but this is March twenty-fifth, and Lucy will soon be fighting for her life as fire sweeps through the locked down factory trapping the workers inside.