Turn-of-the
Century Child
Historical Fiction (and some memoirs)
| African-Americans | California | Labor | Midwest | Mill Work | Native Americans | New York | New England | Southwest | West |
Cutler, Jane. The Song of the Molimo. New York:
Farrar, 1998.
Useful for a discussion of how World's Fairs reflected their times, a 12-year-old
boy tours the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair with a pygmy who is part of the African
"display."
Tunnell, Michael O. and Richard Ammon, eds. The Story of Ourselves; Teaching History Through Children's Literature. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1993.
Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. New York: Random House,
1974.
Three families from different backgrounds interact with each other and with famous
figures of the period like Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, and J. Pierpont
Morgan. Historical events merge with creative imagination for a larger-than-life
story.
Levine, Gair Carson. Dave at Night. New York:
HarperCollins, 1999.
An orphan in New York's Hebrew Home for Boys experiences the Harlem Renaissance in 1926.
McKay, Kathleen Canavan. Hearts of Rosewood.
Tudor Publishers, 1997.
Two elderly black women recall the Rosewood, Florida massacre in 1923.
McKissack, Patricia C. Ma Dear's
Aprons. Ilus. by Floyd Cooper. New York: Atheneum, 1997.
Picture book about a rural Alabama housekeeper and her son.
Sebestyen, Ouida. Words by Heart
by Ouida. New York: Yearling, 1997.
An African-American girl in the Southwest in 1910.
Taylor, Mildred D. The Well:
David's Story. New York: Dial, 1995.
Prejudice and drought impact African-American family in rural
Mississippi in early 1900's.
Memoir
Wright, Richard. Black Boy.
Part "Part One: Southern Night." New York: Harper Perennial Library, 1998.
Fictionalized autobiography of a young African-American boy growing up in the South.
Memoir
Memoir
New Jersey
South

© Debbie Abilock August
22, 1999-2004