Middle Grade Fiction That Brings 20th Century History to Life

War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo
Joey, a colt, and Albert, a farmer’s son, have grown up together, but when World War I arrives, Joey is sold to the army to be a cavalry horse. Cavalry charges against tanks and machine guns prove futile, but Joey miraculously survives. Captured by the Germans, he’s first an ambulance horse, and then hauls heavy guns. Though kindness comes Joey’s way, the work is brutal. Joey breaks free, and finds himself in No Man’s Land, the hellish zone between the two opposing armies. By chance he ends up on the British side, miraculously reunited with Albert. This horse’s eye view of the war makes the ruined landscape and the pointless slaughter of men (and horses) vividly real. (A note of reassurance—Joey and Albert both make it home!).

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave, by John Boyne
Here’s a more realistic story of the English home front from the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. On July 28, 1914, Alfie turns 5 and WW I begins. Alfie’s dad is one of the first to enlist. Four years later the war has brought changes. The Czechoslovakian owner of the local candy store, and his daughter, Alfie’s close friend, are in an internment camp. An old family friend, jailed for being a conscientious objector, is beaten when he returns home. And there are no letters from his Dad. When Alfie finds out his father is in the hospital, he vows to bring him home. But his dreams falter when he visits the hospital, and confronts the reality of life for the soldiers wounded in both body and mind. It’s a moving introduction to the way the war affected those at home, and those who came back.

Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #4): A World War I Tale, by Nathan Hale
Though more historical fact than historical fiction, Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales offer a friendly introduction to historical facts with their graphic novel format and lighthearted fictional touches. In this installment, the history of WW I is presented with the help of two narrators, one serious soldier who adds clarifying details, and the other providing comic relief. Though there is humor, the heavy cost of the war is not glossed over. The detailed drawings help make the origins and course of the war clear, imparting information in an enjoyable way; each country, for instance, is represented by a different animal (the Americans are bunnies!).

Blue Willow, by Doris Gates
This book, which won a Newbery Honor in 1941, was a ground-breaking book of realistic fiction that brought the effects of the Great Depression vividly to life. Janey’s family lost their farm in Texas, and now her father is an itinerant worker, following the crops from farm to farm out west. One treasure from the past, a blue willow plate, gives Janey hope that someday her family will once again have a place to call their own. The bitter poverty of Janey’s life is made vivid, but there are still bits of fun and happiness to her life, especially once Mexican-American Lupe becomes her friend. It’s a great introduction to the hardship caused by the Dust Bowl and the Depression, suitable for younger middle grade readers.

Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse
Billie Jo is another girl whose life is destroyed by the Dust Bowl. She was once a happy kid on a farm in Oklahoma, but her life goes horribly wrong when her mother dies from burns, and Billie Jo suffers burns herself that seem to destroy her dream of playing the piano. As the farm folds under the burden of dust and drought, and her father falls into a dark depression. Billie Jo, and her father, must find a path out of the dust to a life that offers, if not certainty, at least hope. Told in free verse poems from Billie Jo’s point of view, this 1998 Newbery Award winner is a harrowing, unforgettable, story that makes the agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl vividly real.

The Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan
For some kids, graphic novels like this one offer a friendly way to enjoy historical fiction. On 11-year old Jack’s Kansas farm in 1937, it hasn’t rained for four years. His older sister Dorothy is sick with pneumonia from the dust, the farm is failing, and everything is pretty awful. But just when he’s losing hope, a fantastical possibility enters his life. If Jack can master the storm that has come to his family’s barn, rain will fall again. The story is as much fantasy as historical fiction, but it is still a valuable introduction to this time and place, especially for visual thinkers. The illustrations make clear the desolation of both the landscape and its hopeless people.

The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen
In modern-day New York, a girl named Hannah drags her feet about going to her family’s Passover Seder. She’s tired of her extended family, and their constant remembering—she knows her grandfather survived a concentration camp, but his rants about the Nazis embarrass her. Then she opens the front door, to let the prophet Elijah in, and her life changes. Now she is Chaya, living in a Polish village in 1942, and the Nazis have their concentration camps up and running. When Nazis round the villagers up and cram them into boxcars, the girl from the future knows she is going to have to try to survive some of the worst horrors imaginable. Yolen does a fine job of portraying the hellishness of a concentration camp, keeping her description just bearable enough for a young reader to keep reading. And she does a fine job in telling of the importance of remembering the past.

The Enemy Above, by Michael Spradlin
Anton’s father left the family’s farm in Ukraine to fight the Nazis, and Anton longs to go look for him. But then the war comes to Ukraine, and the Nazis are determined to remove, by death or deportation, all the Jews who live there. Jews like Anton and his family. Fortunately his uncles have planned a hiding place in a nearby cave system. For a while this shelters the Jews of Anton’s community, but one Nazi major is determined to track them down and kill them. The details of evading the Nazis, surviving underground, and scavenging for food make this a perfect book for kids who like survival stories, but the actual, insane evil of the Nazis, and the one Nazi major in particular, is always at the center of the story, which is based on true events.

Making Bombs for Hitler, by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
As the Nazis expanded the boundaries of their empire in central and eastern Europe, they rounded up thousands of civilians to serves as slaves to power the war machine. Lida, though only nine, is one of a group of Ukrainian kids rounded up and taken to a labor camp to work as a slave. The conditions are brutal, but fortunately for Lida, her skill at sewing keeps her alive. Her nimble fingers are then put to work making bombs for Hitler, bombs that any careless moves might detonate. As the war starts going badly for Germany, Lida and the other girls find ways to cleverly sabotage the bombs. All the while, she never gives up hope that one day she’ll find her sister again. This story of the little known slave labor camps broadens young readers knowledge of Nazi atrocities, and is a gripping story of hope and survival in its own right.

The Last Cherry Blossom, by Kathleen Burkinshaw
Yuriko is proud of her Samurai heritage, and loves her home in Hiroshima. She tries not to let the war, with its sirens, drills, and American planes flying overhead, distract her from everyday life. Her Papa is getting remarried, and she worries more about whether she’ll still have time with him. But despite the government’s propaganda, it’s clear the war isn’t going well, and she can’t ignore it, especially when a young man she knows is killed. The chapters begin with news clips, radio-show transcripts, and propaganda posters, keeping the war, and the march of time toward August 6, 1945, in the reader’s attention even as Yuriko’s family drama gently unfolds. Then August 6 comes, and the atomic bomb falls on Hirshoima. The book ends soon after with Yuriko in a place of safety, though her family and home have been destroyed, and though she has seen horrors no one should ever have to face. It is fascinating to see the war from a Japanese perspective, and this is a memorable and moving story.

Stella by Starlight, by Sharon M. Draper
It’s the early 1930s in a small town in North Caroline, and Stella and her family experience daily injustices and inequalities that shape their lives. Then the Ku Klux Klan sets to work terrorizing Stella’s community. The tension and fear grow as three black men, including Stella’s father, claim their right to vote, and what the community dreads most almost comes to past when the KKK burns the house of one of these men. Alongside this external tension, Stella is struggling to find confidence in herself as she dreams of a career as a writer, and the warmth of her family’s love brings comfort to Stella (and the reader) even though the outside forces of hatred and racism press hard against the community. It’s a great introduction to the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement.

Midnight Without a Moon, by Linda Williams Jackson
Rose is 13, and dreams of someday escaping the heat and poverty of her life in 1955 Mississippi. She lives with her grandmother, who can’t stand her, and reviles her for the darkness of her skin. The oppression and despair around her are growing, brought to a head by the murder of Emmett Till, a 14 year old black boy from Chicago. It’s a gripping portrayal of the brutality of the Jim Crow South, and for many kids, it will be a real eye-opening one. Rose might have good reason to despair (and her story is indeed a heavy one) but she, and many others, don’t give up.

One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia
Delphine and her two sisters have been forced to spend the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California, with the mother who walked away from them. Once they get there, their mother does not seem particularly interested in their company; instead, she is focused on her work with the Black Panthers, a new radical civil rights group, and the sisters are packed off to a Black Panther day camp. Seen through Delphine’s smart, perceptive eyes, the reader learns about the early days of this part of the Civil Rights movement, and though it might seem a serious subject, the relationship of the three sisters makes it a warm and funny story.