Jack and Annie are ready for their next fantasy adventure in the bestselling middle-grade series—the Magic Tree House!
Cannon fire!
That’s what Jack and Annie hear when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to the time of the American Civil War. There they meet a famous nurse named Clara Barton and do their best to help wounded soldiers. It is their hardest journey in time yet—and the one that will make the most difference to their own lives!
Flame colored taffeta
Annie, Between the States
Annie Sinclair’s Virginia home is in the battle path of the Civil War. Her brothers, Laurence and Jamie, fight to defend the South, while Annie and her mother tend to wounded soldiers. When she develops a romantic connection with a Union Army lieutenant, Annie’s view of the war broadens. Then an accusation calls her loyalty into question. A nation and a heart divided force Annie to choose her own course.
My Vicksburg
Claire Louise Corbett and her Confederate family flee their home as Union soldiers shell their town of Vicksburg, Mississippi. They venture out from the safety of a cave only three times a day, when the Union army takes their meals at eight in the morning, noon, and eight at night. Although many of the townspeople suffer from a lack of food, the Corbetts receive extra rations from Claire Louise’s brother, Landon, a doctor with the Union army. When Claire Louise discovers her brother tending to a Confederate soldier who is responsible for Robert E. Lee’s “lost order” (causing the South to lose the Battle of Antietam), she is forced to make a difficult choice between family and friends.
Award-winning historical novelist Ann Rinaldi paints a story of family, courage, and secrets during the forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg, a battle that has sometimes been ignored in history because it ended the same day as the Battle of Gettysburg.
After the Dancing Days
Is War A Thing To Be Forgotten?
That’s what Annie’s mother would like to do. She wants to forget the pain and heartacheand to keep it away from Annie, too. But Annie cannot forget the death of her favorite uncle, who was killed in France. She cannot forget Andrew, the angry young veteran she meets at the hospital where her father works. Can Annie find the courage to help Andrew? And will she ever be able to make sense of a war that took so much from so many?
Drawn to the Kansas hospital where her father cares for wounded World War One veterans, Annie meets Andrew, a disfigured young soldier. As Annie helps Andrew slowly adjust to his wounds, she also faces devastating truths about war and the complex world of adulthood. A girl on the brink of womanhood comes to terms with the brutal aftereffects of war in an absorbing novel.
Trenches, The: Billy Stevens, The Western Front, 1914-1918 (My Story: Boys)
Hold the Oxo: A Teenage Soldier Writes Home (Canadians at War #6)
Canada was young during the First World War, and with as many as 20,000 underage soldiers leaving their homes to join the war effort, the country’s army was, too. Jim, at 17, was one of them, and he penned countless letters home. But these weren’t the writings of an ordinary boy. They were the letters of a lad who left a small farming community for the city on July 15, 1915, a boy who volunteered to serve with the 79th Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders.
Jim’s letters home gloss over the horrors of war, focusing instead on issues of the home front: of harvesting, training the horses, and the price of hogs. Rarely do these letters, especially those to his mother and father, mention the mud and rats, the lice and stench of the trenches, or the night duty of cutting barbed wire in no man’s land. For 95 years his letters remained in a shoebox decorated by his mother.
Jim was just 18 when he was wounded and died during the Battle of the Somme. Hold the Oxo! tells the story that lies between the lines of his letters, filling in the historical context and helping us to understand what it was like to be Jim.
Accidental Spy
Dandy Dan McCracken is a rogue wandering around eastern Pennsylvania during the American Revolution. Wounded and on the run from the law, he’s rescued and nursed to health by the lovely ward of Benedict Arnold’s procurement officer. When the girl’s husband returns from the front, McCracken falls in with British spies. He switches sides again as a result of love and becomes a hero, not through choice but circumstance.
Brave Soldier, A
In August 1914, when war breaks out in Europe, Canadians rush to join the army to fight with the Allies, expecting to be home by Christmas. Everyone thinks the war will be over in a few months. But by the time the war ends in 1918, nearly 10 million soldiers and 13 million civilians are dead. The especially brutal conditions the soldiers face are portrayed in a spare, straightforward style that neither glorifies war nor dwells on the horror. No one reading this book will come away with anything other than sorrow for the tragedy and futility of “the war to end all wars.” Debon’s well-researched and realistic illustrations add a wealth of texture and detail to this story.
Escape by Night: A Civil War Adventure
Ten-year-old Tommy and his sister Annie are intrigued by the new soldiers arriving in their Georgia town. Since the Civil War started, wounded men waiting to be treated at the local church-turned-hospital have been coming in by droves. When Tommy sees a soldier drop his notebook, he sends his dog, Samson, to fetch it. Tommy soon meets the soldier and is faced with the hardest decision he’s ever had to make: whether or not he should help a Yankee escape to freedom.
Filled with intriguing suspense and tackling difficult questions about slavery, this story, told in accessible short chapters, will appeal to history buffs as well as those who appreciate a faithful dog.