On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells

Part historical fiction, part time travel mystery, On the Blue Comet starts with a young boy, Oscar, and his father living in Cairo, Illinois in the late 1920s. They share a love of model trains and have built a wonderful train layout in the basement of their home. When the crash comes in 1929, the father loses his job and the house and has to sell the trains to pay for a ticket to California to try to find work. Oscar has to stay with his Aunt and cousin and misses his father terribly. When he finds out the trains are on display in a local bank, he befriends the night watchman to visit them. While he visiting there one night, robbers follow him in and threaten him and the guard. In a panic, he somehow jumps onto the train platform, which magically becomes real and finds himself on a train to California. On it he meets a handsome young actor who helps him connect with his father, but on arrival discovers that 10 years have passed and the U.S. is at war. Somehow, he has to get back to the train to get back to his time. While the cameo appearances of several famous movie stars is fun, the target audience may not be familiar with any of them. Fabulous illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline enhance the story, and the period details are good. On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells, Illustrations by Bagram Ibatouillline. Candlewick Press, 2010.

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

In a story based on the fairy tale "Maid Maleen" and featuring a setting inspired by medieval Mongolia, Dashti, an orphaned peasant is taken in by the court and taught to be a ladies maid. She is taught to read and write and is assigned to be a maid to Lady Saren. That same day, Lady Saren's father decrees she must spend the next 7 years locked in a tower for disobeying his orders to marry a neighboring nobleman. Soon Dashti and Saren are locked away, and Dashti is chronicling their adventures and efforts to survive, save their supply of food from rats, and the visitors and threats that come and go outside their tower. Eventually, they escape to find Saren's homeland destroyed in war and make their way to a neighboring kingdom. Throughout their adventures they have been hopeful that the neighboring Kahn who had been Lady Saren's first romance would take them in and protect them, but when they got to his kingdom they had to work in the kitchen and hide their identify. Eventually they make acquaintance with the Kahn and help him in his battles against the the nobleman who had sought to marry Saren. A quaint fantasy with delightful illustrations by James Noel Smith. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. Bloomsbury, 2007.

Call me Hope by Gretchen Olson

Hope is in 6th grade and lives with her brother and single mother. Her school regularly takes 6th graders to an Outdoor School in the spring, and she is greatly looking forward to it. What she doesn't let people know, however, is that her mother is constantly yelling at her, belittling her and generally being verbally abusive. When she spots a pair of hiking boots in a second hand store, she tries to figure out how she can earn the money to pay for them while staying on her mother's good side. She devises a system to earn points to help her not be affected by her mothers comments, and when her mother forbids her to go to Outdoor School because of something she did, school counselors and friends band together to help her. The book uses strong language to bring home the point of what it feels like to be verbally abused, so it is most appropriate for middle school or up. Still, it shows ways to cope and methods available to help students in difficult family situations. Call me Hope by Gretchen Olson. Little, Brown and Co., 2007.

Shooting Kabul by N. H. Senzai

At the start of Shooting Kabul, Fadi is living in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2000. The Taliban is in power and his American educated parents are becoming targets of the regime. So they arrange to leave, hiring smugglers to get them across the border to Pakistan. When the truck arrives to take them and the other refugees who have arranged passage, a  truck full of Taliban fighters are closing in fast. In the hurry and the rush to get aboard the truck, Fadi loses his grip on the hand of his 6 year old sister Miriam, and she is left behind. After all efforts to locate her from Pakistan fail, the family, Fadi's parents and his older sister, Noor, reluctantly travel to Fremont, California where relatives await them. Fadi slowly adjusts to life in America, all the while blaming himself for Miriam's disappearance. In Pakistan, Fadi and his father Habib, frequently took photographs together, so when he finds out there is a photo club at his school, he joins hoping to win the top prize in a photo contest for students--a trip to India, close enough to Pakistan he thinks to be able to search for Miriam. Fadi works on his photos, and is adjusting to life in the United States when the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 occur. Soon, he is a target for bullies at his school blaming him and the other Afghan students for the attack. The book effectively portrays the challenge of dealing with bullies, the struggle of being an outsider and adjusting to a new life, and the importance of strong family ties. Based in part on the author's husband's story of leaving Afganistan during the Soviet occupation in 1979.

The Dancing Pancake by Eileen Spinelli

This sweet book in verse tells the story of Bindi, who's adjusting to the fact that her father, who lost his job, has left to look for a job in another city. Soon, she finds out that he and her mother have separated, and her mother and her aunt have decided to open a restaurant in town. Bindi and her mother move into an apartment above the restaurant, and she begins trying to cope with her changed life. Her friends help, she slowly creates a new life in the restaurant. She gets to know the regulars, and trys to help a homeless woman who comes in regularly. A slice of life from a trying time in one girls' life. The Dancing Pancake by Eileen Spinelli. Illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman

Ye Toads and Vipers! That's Meggy Swann's way of expressing her frustration with her situation when the story begins. She's 13 and has just been sent from the small village in Elizabethan England where she lived with her mother to London to live with her father. Her father is an alchemist, studying the possibility of transformation of elements, focused only on his work, so Meggy has to make her own way around London, which is difficult as she is crippled and needs walking sticks to get around. With the help of her father's former assistant, she makes friends and adjusts to life in London. As she begins to help her father with his work, she faces a moral dilemma and has to make some hard choices. The rowdiness and filth of 16th Century London is vividly described and the audiobook, which just won an Odyssey Award, transports you to another time and place. The narration, by Katherine Kellgren, is pitch perfect. Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman. Read by Katherine Kellgren, Listening Library, 2010.

Countdown by Deborah Wiles

Franny is an 11 year old girl in the fifth grade in Maryland in October 1962. She is being taught to take shelter during air raid drills, and adults all around her are talking of the Cold War and a possible conflict with the Soviet Union. Her best friend, Margie, has been spending more time with a new girl, Gale, and her big sister just started college and has mysterious meetings and grown up activities, so Franny feels left out. The story of Franny's day-to-day life is interspersed with pictures and information detailing the early 1960s, the beginning of the Cold War, Harry Truman and more. There is information about the Civil Rights movement, and the Cuban Missle Crisis. Franny's father is an Air Force officer, so when President Kennedy announces a that nuclear missiles are aimed at the United States from Cuba and that he is instituting a blockade, her father is called to action. Her uncle, a World War I veteran fearing the worse, tries to build a bomb shelter in the yard and ends up in the hospital. Things seems to be going from bad to worse, then a fight starts at a Halloween Party between Franny and Margie. Franny chases after Margie when she runs away, and has to face her fears of the bomb and about her life. Wonderful coming of age story. According to the Author's afterward, the book is the first in a trilogy about growing up in the sixties. She describes it as a Documentary Novel. I was absorbed and fascinated as I have memories of the time, so I look forward to getting input from today's students who aren't familiar with the period. Countdown by Deborah Wiles.