Children's Book Suggestions | Historical FictionUnpublished

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Technically, this series is more of a time travel story than true historical fiction, but there's no better way to introduce kids to world history than "the Jack & Annie books." (Bridging Fiction Grades 2-4)

Prehistoric

A baby with a powerful destiny is adopted by an abbey full of monks in this modern classic from beloved author Kate DiCamillo. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Medieval Europe

An Asante boy is captured, sold into slavery, and escapes in this novel in verse from powerhouse author Kwame Alexander. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Nineteenth Century Africa & US | 1860

A spunky teen girl avoids her embroidery, plays pranks, and tries to avoid an arranged marriage in this Newbery Honor-winning classic. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Medieval England | 1290

A medieval girl flees the Black Plague on foot, an experience that may be cathartic for kids still dealing with the ramifications of living through a global pandemic. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Medieval Europe | 1300s

A Jewish teenager helps her grandfather protect their fellow Jews from persecution in Inquisition-era Spain. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Medieval Spain | 1400s

A story of the American Revolution from children's literary legend Avi, in which a boy from a Loyalist family must choose sides in the burgeoning War for Independence. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

American Revolution | 1775

Based on the author's childhood experiences, a Muslim boy escapes to the US after ethnic tensions erupt into genocide in his Bosnian homeland in this rare exploration of Balkan history in children's literature. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1992

Two enslaved children escape plantation life and take refuge among an off-the-grid community of formerly enslaved Black Americans in the Great Dismal Swamp. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Nineteenth Century US

The author of Wonder crafts a masterful horse story about a boy's search for his missing father. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Nineteenth Century US | 1860

An award-winning author tells an atmospheric summer story based on her childhood in Brooklyn, when her Bushwick neighborhood is caught between the pressures of gentrification and a wave of fires. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1970s

The first in the popular series of lightly fictionalized memoirs about Wilder's childhood in the upper Midwest. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Nineteenth Century US | 1871

A 13-year-old Chinese American girl spins her own twist on American tall tales for other workers in their post-Chinese Exclusion Act mining camp. (Young Teen Graphic Novel Grades 3-5)

Nineteenth Century US | 1885

A young girl, grandmother, and baby brother survive a harrowing desert journey as they flee to safety in the US during the Mexican Revolution, inspired by the author's grandmother's own immigration journey. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Twentieth Century US | 1910

After a fire destroys her family's business, a young girl gets to know the neighbors in her new trailer park home as she searches for a girl who was kidnapped the previous year. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Twentieth Century | 1974

A modern American kid stuck at home during the pandemic learns about his Ukrainian grandmother's horrific experiences during the Holodomor famine engineered by the Stalinist Soviet government. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Twentieth Century | 1932

A tween boy moves to Alcatraz when his father becomes a guard at the famous prison. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Great Depression | 1935

A baseball-loving tomboy confronts injustice when her family loses their Dust Bowl farm and relocates to a California peach orchard. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Great Depression

National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louise Erdrich draws on her Ojibwe heritage in this series of books inspired by 19th-century Indigenous communities in northern Minnesota. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Nineteenth Century US | 1847

A graphic novel about a Japanese Canadian boy whose love of baseball brings him solace while incarcerated during World War II. (Children's Graphic Novel Grades 3-5)

World War II

A Korean-American middle schooler and his friends cross LA during the LA Riots to help his father, whose choice to stay at the family store in Koreatown places him at the heart of the unrest. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1992

A boy solves a mystery on the home front while his father's away fighting in World War II. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

World War II | 1943

An American teenage boy lies about his age to join the Allied forces for the D-Day invasion of Normandy in this pulse-pounding adventure from bestselling author Alan Gratz. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7) World War II | 1944

Shortly after Cuba comes under Communist control, a young boy immigrates to the US by himself in this historical novel inspired by the author's father's experiences. For additional novels on the topic, try Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle, Farewell Cuba Mi Isla by Alexandra Diaz, and Isla to Island by Alexis Castellanos. (Children's Fiction Grades 3-5)

Cold War | 1960

A Jewish girl feels caught in the middle when her older sister elopes with an Indian American man after interracial marriage is legalized in the US. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1967

A classic novel from Gary D. Schmidt about a Protestant boy who learns to love Shakespeare during an independent study class held while his Catholic and Jewish classmates take religious studies classes. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1967

A trio of sisters spend the summer of 1968 with their estranged activist mother in Berkeley, where she tries to repair their relationship and sends the girls to a Black Panther-run summer camp. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1968

On the 25th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, a Japanese girl begins to untangle the legacy of this traumatic experience in her community in this translated novel. Pair this one with Sadako and the Thousand Cranes for an in-depth exploration of atomic bomb survivor stories. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1970

A young girl moves through grief and finds her voice after her dad dies of AIDS at the height of the mid-1980s AIDS epidemic. (Young Teen Fiction Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1987

A middle school girl finds herself journeying back to 1993 to join her parents in their middle school years in this updated twist on Back to the Future. (Young Teen Grades 5-7)

Twentieth Century | 1993