I put together a list for a 7th grade Social Studies teacher and I thought that others could benefit, so I’m posting it here. This is just a sampling and is in no way an all-inclusive list. If there are books that you would recommend that make history lively, mention them in the comments.
The students just learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, thus the first bit:
Books about the Shirtwaist fire like Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch:
Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix; Threads and Flames by Esther Friesner
Mr. Griggs’s Favorite Historical Fiction Books
• Fire from the Rock by Sharon Draper (Little Rock 9)
• March Toward the Thunder by Joseph Bruchac (Civil War)
• The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins by Walter Dean Myers (World War II)
• The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty by Ellen White (Vietnam)
• The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez (Operation Pedro Pan)
• Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai (Sept. 11, 2001)
• A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (Sudanese Civil War)
• Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers (Iraq War)
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (The Holocaust)
• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (Revolutionary War)
• Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson (Yellow Fever Epidemic)
• Revolution is not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine (Chinese Cultural Revolution)
• All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg (Vietnam)
• Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (Civil War)
Mr. Griggs’s Favorite Historical Nonfiction Books
• The Dark Game by Paul Janeczko (History of Spies)
• Lost Boy, Lost Girl by John Dau (Sudanese Civil War)
• Bloody Times by James L. Swanson (Lincoln’s mega-funeral and the hunt for Jefferson Davis)
