Children's Historical Fiction set in California

Author	Rita Williams-Garcia
ISBN	0060760885

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion...

Author	Yoshiko Uchida
ISBN	0689716729

Growing up in California during the depression isn't easy for eleven-year-old Rinko. She desperately wants to fit in and be like everyone else, but instead she is ridiculed and made to feel different because she is Japanese. But when Aunt Waka comes to visit, and brings with her the old-fashioned wisdom...

Author	Doris Gates
ISBN	0140309241

To Janey Larkin, the blue willow plate was the most beautiful thing in her life, a symbol of the home she could only dimly remember. Now that her father was an itinerant worker, Janey didn't have a home she could call her own or any real friends, as her family had to keep moving, following the crops from farm...

Author	Karen Cushman
ISBN	0618504559

Francine Green doesn’t speak up much, and who can blame her? Her parents aren’t interested in her opinions, the nuns at school punish girls who ask too many questions, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities is blacklisting people who express unpopular ideas. There’s safety in silence....

Author	Cara Chow
ISBN	1606841262

Frances, a Chinese-American student at an academically competitive school in San Francisco, has always had it drilled into her to be obedient to her mother and to be a straight-A student so that she can go to Med school.  But is being a doctor what she wants?  It has never even occurred to Frances to question...

Author	Winifred Conkling
ISBN	1582463379

Sylvia never expected to be at the center of a landmark legal battle; all she wanted was to enroll in school.

Aki never expected to be relocated to a Japanese internment camp in the Arizona desert; all she wanted was to stay on her family farm and finish the school year.

The two girls certainly...

Author

Pat Murphy

It is the early 1970s. Twelve-year-old Joan is sure that she is going to be miserable when her family moves from Connecticut to California. Then she meets a most unusual girl. Sarah prefers to be called "Fox" and lives with her author dad in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. The two girls start writing...

Author	Karen Cushman
ISBN	0330398326

Dear Gram and Grampop,
Please do not address yours truly as California anymore, California Morning Whipple being a foolish name for a duck much less a girl. I call myself Lucy now. I cannot hate California and be California. I know you will understand.

California doesn't suit Lucy Whipple...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0064400859

Moon Shadow was eight when he sailed from China to join his father Windrider in America. Windrider lived in San Francisco's Chinatown and worked in a laundry. Moon Shadow had never seen him.But he soon loved and respected this father, a man of genius, a man with a fabulous dream. And with Moon Shadow's...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0064404897

In 1867, Otter travels from Three Willows Village in China to California -- the Land of the Golden Mountain. There he will join his father and uncle.

In spite of the presence of family, Otter is a stranger among the other Chinese in this new land. And where he expected to see a land of goldfields,...

Author	Judy Blundell
ISBN	0545310229

From National Book Award-winning author Judy Blundell, a thrilling account of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

When Minnie Bonner's father disappears after losing the Bonners' Philadelphia tavern, the wealthy gentleman Edward Sump, led by his avaricious wife, offers Minnie a chance...

Author

Susan Carlton

It’s 1971, and seventeen-year-old Chloe and her best friend MJ head to San Francisco to ring in the New Year. But Chloe has an ulterior motive—and a secret. She’s pregnant and has devised a plan not to be. In San Francisco’s flower-power heyday, it was (just about) legal to end her pregnancy. ...

Author	Sid Fleischman
ISBN	0440415861

After a narrow escape from the nasty O. O. Mary's clutches, Annyrose ventures forth to find her long-lost brother Lank in gold-digging territory. But the journey is rough, bandits and fiends waiting for the traveler at every bend. Soon Annyrose runs into Joaquin Murieta, legendary bandit of the Gold...

Author	Zilpha Keatley Snyder
ISBN	0440411521

I picked this book up at the Goodwill, not really knowing what it was about other than running, which I have an interest in. Surprisingly, it was about the Dust Bowl era, my current topic of particular interest! Therefore, I may have liked it more than I would have otherwise. But all in all, it was a very good...

Author	Zilpha Keatley Snyder
ISBN	0595321836

Robin was always wandering off (her mother's words) to get away from the confusion she felt inside her. It was not until Robin's father found a permanent job at the McCurdy ranch, after three years as a migrant worker, that Robin had a place to wander to. As time went by the Velvet Room became more and more...

Author	Sherry Garland
ISBN	0606228101

Title of Book: Valley of the Moon

Author: Sherry Garland

Summary:
What would it be like to be a servant? Maria Rosalia has been a servant for nine years of her life and her brother Domingo is a stable boy. But they have been well treated by the Medina family and other servants who feel...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0060276924

Did you want to go to America?
Pop: Sure. I didn't have a choice. My father said I had to go. So I went.

Were you sad when you left your village?
Pop: Maybe a little . . . well, maybe a lot.

Ten-year-old Gim Lew Yep knows that he must leave his home in China and travel to America with the...

Author	Scott O'Dell
ISBN	0440909287

Raised to take the place of her dead brother,  Carlota de Zubaran can do anything that Carlos could  have done. She races her stallion through the  California lowlands, dives into shark-infested waters  searching for gold, and fights in the battles that  rage between the Mexicans...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0590386077

This is an excellent entry in the Scholastic "Dear America" series. Aimed at the 9 to 12 year old age group, they are short novoels set in differening historyical periods in US history.

At the age of 12 (page 34), Bright Intelligence has heard incredible news. He, who everyone calls "Runt", will...

Author	Kirby Larson
ISBN	0385737467

After leaving Uncle Chester's homestead claim, orphan Hattie Brooks throws a lasso around a new dream, even bigger than the Montana sky. She wants to be a reporter, knowing full well that a few pieces published in the Arlington News will not suffice. Real reporters must go to Grand Places, and do Grand...

Author	Liza Ketchum
ISBN	0670011193

It's the spring of 1851 and San Francisco is booming. Twelve-year-old Amelia Forrester has just arrived with her family and they are eager to make a new life in Phoenix City. But the mostly male town is not that hospitable to females and Amelia decides she'll earn more money as a boy. Cutting her hair and...

Author

Kathryn Reiss

2.5 stars

I bought this book from the Scholastic Book Fair when I was 9 and remember reading it and loving it as a kid... so there’s 20 years of nostalgia attached to this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t really age well for me. Rereading it at 29, I found there was a lot of dated references and...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0060275243

A gripping portrait of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake by Laura Ingalls Wilder Award winner Laurence Yep.

When the quake subsides, Chin and Henry and their families are lucky to be alive. But now they must escape the fires that have broken out and find their way to safety-before it's too late.

Based...

Author	Francisco Jiménez
ISBN	0826317979

These independent but intertwined stories follow a migrant family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots - and back again - over a number of years. As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define...

Author	Barry Denenberg
ISBN	0590485318

After the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing many people in California couldn't trust the Japanese people. This book is based on a boy named Ben Uchida and what changed in his life during WWII. This book is basically the boy version of the Diary of Anne Frank. This story helps show a different side of WWII the...

Author	John H. Ritter
ISBN	0399246649

Dillontown was built upon a gold mine. Yet for the villagers, life is about something even more valuable: baseball. Home to the Dillontown Nine, they would give anything to join the ranks of professional ballplayers?even their gold. Yet to make it, they will need to defeat the world champion Chicago...

Author	Brenda Woods
ISBN	0142501514

On her tenth birthday, Leah receives a surprise gift from glamorous Aunt Olivia, Mama's only sister, who lives in Los Angeles.  It is a red rose box.  Not many people in 1958 Louisiana have seen such a beautiful traveling case, covered with red roses, filled with jewelry, silk bedclothes, expensive...

Author	Rodman Philbrick
ISBN	0439216001

Grade level :5.7

Genre : Historical fiction

This My Name is America is part of the Dear America book series. Each part of the series is fashioned to be a fictional journal based off of real historical events and people. Most books from this series I have seen have the characters as children,...

Author	Rachel K. Laurgaard
ISBN	0961735724

This book tells about the Reed family in one of the wagon trains taking pioneers to California. The story is told from the point of view of Dolly, a doll that traveled in Patty Reed's pocket. The Reed family wasn't actually with the Donner family when the infamous cannibalism took place so Dolly did not...

Author	Gennifer Choldenko
ISBN	0803734603

Moose and the cons are about to get a lot closer in this much-anticipated sequel. It's 1935. Moose Flanagan lives on Alcatraz with his family, the other families of the guards, and a few hundred no-name hit men, con men, mad dog murderers and a handful of bank robbers too. And one of those cons has just done...

Author	Gennifer Choldenko
ISBN	0803734727

Alcatraz Island in the 1930s isn't the most normal place to grow up, but it's home for Moose Flanagan, his autistic sister, Natalie, and all the families of the guards. When Moose's dad gets promoted to Associate Warden, despite being an unlikely candidate, it's a big deal. But the cons have a point system...

Author	Gennifer Choldenko
ISBN	1101938161

Return to Al Capone's Alcatraz with Newbery Honor-winning author Gennifer Choldenko in this charming addition to the beloved series about the son of a prison guard.

Moose Flanagan lives on a famous island in California: Alcatraz, home to some of the most dangerous prisoners in the United...

Author	Zilpha Keatley Snyder
ISBN	0718823478

I am new to Zilpha Keatley Snyder with an odd, long name but see that she is award-winning through other novels. This 1974 one didn't need to be set in 1938 and doesn't feel like it is in 1938, thus I don't know the authoress' purpose but most of it felt relevant. A strong, sour exception was one teacher's attitude...

Author	Dana Reinhardt
ISBN	0385739540

Drew's a bit of a loner. She has a pet rat, her dead dad's Book of Lists, an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese from working at her mom's cheese shop, and a crush on Nick, the surf bum who works behind the counter. It's the summer before eighth grade and Drew's days seem like business as usual, until one night...

Author	Barbara Brooks Wallace
ISBN	0689874170

Emily Luccock is looking forward to living at Sugar Hill Hall...She remembers her aunt and uncle's grand old mansion well. But this time things are different. Her aunt's once bright and lively home is now dead with silence. Evil lurks in every corner and the dark, shadowed walls watch and whisper late...

Author	Jim Averbeck
ISBN	1442494476

An intrepid boy teams up with Alfred Hitchcock himself in this rollicking mystery rife with action, adventure, intrigue, and all the flavor of film noir.

After the mysterious death of his mother, eleven-year-old Jack Fair is whisked away to San Francisco's swanky Fairmont Hotel by his wicked...

Author	Elizabeth Partridge
ISBN	1599901838

Twelve-year-old Tracy-or Tuyet-has always felt different. The villagers in Vietnam called her con-lai, or "half-breed," because her father was an American GI. And she doesn't fit in with her adoptive family in California, either. But when Tracy and a friend discover a soldier's dogtag hidden among...

Author	Deborah Hopkinson
ISBN	0375836527

“I believe I can just see you on the streets of that bright city.”

Gran’s gone now, but her words live on with Nicholas Dray, almost twelve, as he makes his way from the hot cotton fields to that Queen of Cities: San Francisco. Nick’s on his own for the first time, with nowhere to turn. Then...

Author	Tracy Holczer
ISBN	0399163948

In the midst of the Vietnam War, a young girl struggles to embrace change in this tender family story for fans of Cynthia Lord and Wendy Maas

Lucy is a practical, orderly person--just like her dad. He taught her to appreciate reason and good sense, instilling in her the same values he learned...

Author	Susan Fletcher
ISBN	0689857071

By 1886 many of Eliza Jane McCully's neighbors are concerned that the growing immigrant Chinese population is threatening their comfortable way of life. But it is a young Chinese boy named Wah Chung who saves Eliza and her pet goat from being swept into the sea by a deadly wave. This makes Eliza wonder:...

Author	Eleanor Cameron
ISBN	0316125237

It's a remarkable sensation to go back to a book that meant a lot to you as a child and wonder if the story and characters helped shape you in some way, or if you were already that way and it simply resonated with who you were then. I'm not sure which it was, but I know I read this several times, and as many of the...