2008

Christopher Paul Curtis.  Elijah of Buxton

In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.

2007

Ellen Klages.  The Green Glass Sea

It is 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west on a train to live with her scientist father--but no one will tell her exactly where he is. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he's working on a top secret government program.

2006

Louise Erdrich.  The Game of Silence

Nine-year-old Omakayas, of the Ojibwa tribe, moves west with her family in 1849.

2005

A LaFaye.  Worth

After breaking his leg, eleven-year-old Nate feels useless because he cannot work on the family farm in nineteenth-century Nebraska, so when his father brings home an orphan boy to help with the chores, Nate feels even worse.

2004

Richard Peck.  A River Between Us

During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.

2003

Shelley Pearsall.  Trouble Don't Last

Samuel, an eleven-year-old Kentucky slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad.

2002

Mildred D. Taylor.  The Land

After the Civil War Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.

2001

Janet Taylor Lisle.  The Art of Keeping Cool

In 1942, Robert and his cousin Elliot uncover long-hidden family secrets while staying in their grandparents' Rhode Island town, where they also become involved with a German artist who is suspected of being a spy.

2000

Miriam Bat-Ami.  Two Suns in the Sky

In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents' conviction that they do not belong together.

1999

Harriette Robinet.  Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule

Born with a withered leg and hand, Pascal, who is about twelve years old, joins other former slaves in a search for a farm and the freedom which it promises.

1998

Karen Hesse.  Out of the Dust

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

1997

Katherine Paterson.  Jip, His Story

While living on a Vermont poor farm during 1855 and 1856, Jip learns his identity and that of his mother and comes to understand how he arrived at this place.

1996

Theodore Taylor.  The Bomb

In 1945, when the Americans liberate the Bikini Atoll from the Japanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat.

1995

Graham Salisbury.  Under the Blood-Red Sun

Tomikazu Nakaji's biggest concerns are baseball, homework, and a local bully, until life with his Japanese family in Hawaii changes drastically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

1994

Paul Fleischman.  Bull Run

Northerners, Southerners, generals, couriers, dreaming boys and worried sisters describe the glory, the horror, the thrill, and the disillusionment of the first battle of the Civil War.

1993

Michael Dorris.  Morning Girl

Morning Girl , who loves the day, and her younger brother Star Boy, who loves the night, take turns describing their life on an island in pre-Columbian America; in Morning Girl 's last narrative, she witnesses the arrival of the first Europeans to her world.

1992

Mary Downing Hahn.  Stepping on the Cracks

In 1944, while her brother is overseas fighting in World War II, eleven-year-old Margaret gets a new view of the school bully Gordy when she finds him hiding his own brother, an army deserter, and decides to help him.

1991

Pieter Van Raven.  A Time of Trouble

1990

Carolyn Reeder.  Shades of Gray

At the end of the Civil War, twelve-year-old Will, having lost all his immediate family, reluctantly leaves his city home to live in the Virginia countryside with his aunt and the uncle he considers a "traitor" because he refused to take part in the war.

1989

Lyll Becerra de Jenkins.  The Honorable Prison

1988

Patricia Beatty.  Charley Skedaddle

During the Civil War, a twelve-year-old Bowery Boy from New York City joins the Union Army as a drummer, deserts during a battle in Virginia, and encounters a hostile old mountain woman

1987

Scott O'Dell.  Streams to the River, River to the Sea

A young Indian woman, accompanied by her infant and cruel husband, experiences joy and heartbreak when she joins the Lewis and Clark Expedition seeking a way to the Pacific.

1986

Patricia MacLachlan.  Sarah, Plain and Tall

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

1985

Avi.  The Fighting Ground

Thirteen-year-old Jonathan goes off to fight in the Revolutionary War and discovers the real war is being fought within himself.

1984

Elizabeth George Speare.  The Sign of the Beaver

Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.