Homeschool Librarian

Lexile/Reading Level
760L

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical | Realistic

Historical Time Period
Date
Topic
Geographic Region
| Main Character
Award-Winning Book
Format
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Counting on Grace

1910. Pownal, Vermont. At 12, Grace and her best friend Arthur must leave school and go to work as a “doffers” on their mothers’ looms in the mill. Grace’s mother is the best worker, fast and powerful, and Grace desperately wants to help her. But she’s left handed and doffing is a right-handed job. Grace’s every mistake costs her mother, and the family. She only feels capable on Sundays, when she and Arthur receive special lessons from their teacher. Together they write a secret letter to the Child Labor Board about underage children working in Pownal. A few weeks later a man with a camera shows up. It is the famous reformer Lewis Hine, undercover, collecting evidence for the Child Labor Board. Grace’s brief acquaintance with Hine and the photos he takes of her are a gift that changes her sense of herself, her future, and her family’s future.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
920L Recommended for 5-8 Grade

Kids on Strike

By the early 1900s, nearly two million children were working in the United States. From the coal mines of Pennsylvania to the cotton mills of New England, children worked long hours every day under stunningly inhumane conditions. After years and years of oppression, children began to organize and make demands for better wages, fairer housing costs, and safer working environments.
Some strikes led by young people were successful; some were not. Some strike stories are shocking, some are heartbreaking, and many are inspiring — but all are a testimony to the strength of mind and spirit of the children who helped build American industry.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
850L

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical | Realistic

Historical Time Period
Date
Topic
| | | | | | | Geographic Region
| Main Character
Format

Search of the Moon King’s Daughter

Gentle Emmaline loves nothing more than books and flowers and her little brother Tommy. Sadly, her idyllic country life in Victorian England comes to an abrupt end when her father dies of cholera. The family is forced to move to a mill town, where Emmaline’s mother is dreadfully injured in a factory accident. To ease her pain she takes laudanum and is soon addicted, craving the drug so badly that she sells Tommy into servitude as a chimney sweep in London. Emmaline knows that a sweep’s life is short and awful. Small boys as young as five are forced to climb naked into dark chimneys, their bare feet prodded by nail-studded sticks to keep them working. If Tommy is to survive, it is up to Emmaline to find him.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
1210L Recommended for 5-8 Grades

Rise of Industry: 1860-1900 (Drama of American History)

In Collier’s book on Industry, the tremendous economic boon to the U.S. is not trumpeted to the exclusion of the abuse of workers-including children-by early industry giants, and the deep philanthropy of some figures is explicitly tied to the wealth gained by owners at the expense of employees. By focusing on broad themes, the Colliers are able to show cause and effect over several decades and to make the sweep of time “bite-sized” and intelligible. The frequent full-color and black-and-white period photographs and engravings effectively supplement and enrich the texts.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
830L

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical

Historical Time Period
Date
Topic
| | | | | Geographic Region
Main Character
Format

Turn Homeward, Hannalee

During the closing days of the Civil War, plucky 12-year-old Hannalee Reed, sent north to work in a Yankee mill, struggles to return to the family she left behind in war-torn Georgia. “A fast-moving novel based upon an actual historical incident with a spunky heroine and fine historical detail.”–School Library Journal.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
Recommended for 4-6 Grades

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical

Date
Topic
| | | Geographic Region
| Main Character
Format

Cotton In My Sack (American Regional)

Author: Part of a Series:

Joanda’s family are sharecroppers growing cotton in Arkansas. The children share in a life of hard work and poverty. A revealing tale of life among the sharecroppers, tenants, and farm-owners in cotton country.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
730L

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical

Topic
| | | | | | Geographic Region
| Main Character
| Award-Winning Book
Format
| |

Iqbal

When young Iqbal is sold into slavery at a carpet factory, his arrival changes everything for the other overworked and abused chidren there. It is Iqbal who explains to them that despite their master’s promises, he plans on keeping them as his slaves indefinetely. But it is also Iqbal who inspires the other children to look to a future free from toil…and is brave enough to show them how to get there.
This moving fictionalized account of the real Iqbal Masih is told through the voice of Fatima, a young Pakistani girl whose life is changed by Iqbal’s courage.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
900L

Genre/Category
Biographies | Nonfiction | Social Sciences

Date
| Topic
| | Geographic Region
Main Character
Format

Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Worker’s Rights

A biography of Mary Harris Jones, the union organizer who worked tirelessly for the rights of workers.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.
Lexile/Reading Level
NA - Recommended for 7-9 Grades

Genre/Category
Biographies | Nonfiction | Social Sciences

Date
| Topic
| | | Geographic Region
Main Character
Award-Winning Book
Format

Mother Jones: One Woman’s Fight for Labor

Mary Harris, later known as Mother Jones, was born in Ireland in 1830 and immigrated to the United States as a young woman. With prodigious energy and a gift for oratory, she became one of America’s most influential union organizers. Looking frail and grandmotherly in her prim black dress, steel-rimmed glasses, and white hair, this tiny, indomitable woman gave stirring speeches urging workers to stand up for their rights, bullied government officials, and fearlessly confronted business leaders. Betsy Harvey Kraft’s clear, meticulously researched text introduces an important figure in American social history to a new generation.

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Please note: Our posting a book in our Homeschool Librarian database does not mean that we endorse its contents. Please use your own discretion when selecting books for your child to read. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Purchases made through our affiliate links help support this site. Book descriptions are sourced from either Amazon.com or GoodReads.