As a child of immigrants, I couldn’t find my family’s story in the Dick and Jane books we had to read in elementary school.  But I kept looking:  first as a university student, then as a mother, and later as a writer.  Turned out, I had to write my own. But the journey – the search, and the re-search – was a trip well worth taking.

Lois Lowry’s book Number the Stars (Newbery Award, 1990) opened my eyes to the power of historical fiction for young people.  And once opened, my eyes couldn’t get enough. Here are some of my more recent favorites.

John Wilson’s Flames of the Tiger (Kids Can Press, 2003).  World War II is seen through a German boy’s eyes during the final days in Berlin.

Kit Pearson’s The Sky is Falling, Looking at the Moon, and The Lights Go On Again (Penquin Books) This is a great trilogy about English war guests in Canada during the war.

Leslie Wilson’s Last Train From Kummersdorf  (Faber and Faber, 2003).  Here children are fleeing the Russians in the chaos of 1945.

Ilse Koehn’s Mischling, Second Degree (re-released by Puffin Books, 1990). This book is a survivor’s story about growing up in a Nazi country.

My hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba welcomed many post-war European immigrants. Some became writers. Eva Wiseman wrote several books about her background as a child in communist Hungary. Her books include My Canary Yellow Star, which was on the New York Library Best Books list.  A more recent book, Kanada, (Tundra Books, 2006) was a finalist for Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award. And I’ve just bought her newest book, Puppet, which I can’t wait to read. It’s set in Hungary in 1882 and deals with a less known time of conflict between Christians and Jews.

Kathy Kacer is a Canadian who also writes historical fiction based on family.  Her book, The Secret of Gabi’s Dresser (Second Story Press, 1999) is set in Czechoslovakia.

Another local author who’s a must-read is the prolific Carol Matas. Lisa (1987) and Jesper (1989) are two books that deal with the Danish resistance during WWII.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch lives in Ontario. She’s written about the Armenian Genocide in books like Aram’s Choice and Daughter of War.  Kobzar’s Children is a young adult collection of stories that she edited. It shares the voices of unheard Ukrainians.  Enough (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000 with Michael Martchenko as the illustrator) is a picture book about the Holodomor – death by hunger during the 1932 famine in what today is again Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko – the current president of Ukraine – has awarded her his country’s highest honor.

Barbara Smucker’s book, Days of Terror,  (Puffin, 1981) deals with the years immediately after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It’s about the tense and violent period just before the setting of my own fall-release book, The Kulak’s Daughter.

I could go on. These books are but a sampling of what’s available. Good books, good stories, good histories.  Considering our countries are filled with people who come from foreign lands because of war, persecution, homelessness, and economics, it’s no wonder authors continue to write their family’s his- stories.  They’re our-stories. The days of Dick and Jane are long over.

So, what’s your favorite historical fiction book? What’s your-story?

THE RED UMBRELLA by Christina Diaz Gonzalez

• Publication Season/Year: Summer 2010
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Release Date: May 11, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): 0375861904
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

The Red Umbrella is the moving tale of a 14-year-old girl’s journey from Cuba to America as part of Operation Pedro Pan—an organized exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, whose parents sent them away to escape Fidel Castro’s revolution.

In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, Lucía Álvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the soldiers come to her sleepy Cuban town, everything begins to change. Freedoms are stripped away. Neighbors disappear. Her friends feel like strangers. And her family is being watched.

As the revolution’s impact becomes more oppressive, Lucía’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States—on their own.

Suddenly plunked down in Nebraska with well-meaning strangers, Lucía struggles to adapt to a new country, a new language, a new way of life. But what of her old life? Will she ever see her home or her parents again? And if she does, will she still be the same girl?

The Red Umbrella is a moving story of country, culture, family, and the true meaning of home.A year after the communist revolution, fourteen year old Lucia still leads a carefree life in Cuba thinking only of parties and boys.  But this all changes on the day the soldiers arrive in her small town and she is forced to face certain truths about her family, friends and country.

As the weeks pass and the effects of the revolution are felt all around, Lucia’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States… alone.  In a new country, away from her parents, what will Lucia do with her newfound freedom?  Will she ever see her parents or her home again?  And if she does, will she still be the same girl?

This story is loosely based on the author’s own parents’ experience and that of over 14,000 other children who were part of Operation Pedro Pan – the largest exodus of unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere.

• Publication Season/Year: Summer 2009
• Publisher: Philomel Books
• Release Date: June 11, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-399-25189-4
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

“When the railroad’s in your blood, it draws you like a pump draws water from the ground.”

Meet a town and a train and a time and a boy – Jimmy Cannon.  And meet his father – as strong as a Mallet locomotive – whom Jimmy simply cannot figure out!  But who, in a dramatic and breathtaking twist, turns out to be so much more than Jimmy ever knew.

In a book that goes to the core of boyhood – its Halloween mischief, its hunting day mystery, its championship game surprise, and nighttime adventures – Fran Cannon Slayton brings her readers to the exhilarating crossroads of an unforgettable West Virginia railroad town and adulthood itself.

Early Praise for When the Whistle Blows:

“When the Whistle Blows is reminiscent of classic tales by Jack London, William Golding and Robert Louis Stevenson, yet carries the remarkable, fresh voice of its author. Fran Cannon Slayton should be extremely proud of this, her debut novel.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and Identical and National Book Award finalist

“With wit and warmth Fran Cannon Slayton recounts a steam-driven coming of age story in the last of the real railroad days.” —Richard Peck, author of A Year Down Yonder

“I loved When the Whistle Blows.” —Barbara Keifer, Charlotte S. Huck Professor of Children’s Literature at Ohio State University

“A highly engaging, well-written, really good read.” —Dr. Joel Taxel, University of Georgia, Department of Language and Literary Education

“From its whip-smart opening to its look at the complexity of father/son relationships, Slayton’s loving novel takes a long hard look at the death of people and that intangible idea of ‘home’ . . . ‘When the Whistle Blows’ stopped me in my tracks.” —Elizabeth Bird, A Fuse #8 Production (School Library Journal)

When the Whistle Blows is now available for pre-order at Borders, Amazon, and Your Local Indie Store online!

FAITHFUL by Janet S. Fox

• Publication Season/Year: Spring, 2010
• Publisher: Puffin
• Release Date: May 13, 2010
• ISBN: 978-0-14-241413-2

Janet S. Fox’s debut novel for young adults, FAITHFUL, is a romance, mystery and adventure set in the Gilded Age. Ms. Fox’s heroine, Maggie Bennet, loses her mother in a tragic accident, and then is forced to accept her father’s desire to leave their high society life in Newport, RI, and move to the American west. They relocate to the Greater Yellowstone, where Maggie searches for herself and for love, while her courage and determination are tested in an astonishing and dangerous environment.

The planned sequel to FAITHFUL follows Maggie as she is forced to return to Newport and an arranged marriage; now she yearns for her newly adopted western home. Her attempt to return to Yellowstone is tumultuous, and this sequel evokes the epic spirit of turn-of-the-century America.