WELCOME TO AUSTRALIAN USED HOMESCHOOL BOOKS!
HISTORICAL FICTION - MODERN HISTORY
Wings Over The Channel (Margaret Beames) $6 PB EC A gorgeous picture book where great-grandfather reminisces when as a boy he saw Louis Blériot become the first man to fly the English Channel. Great for studies of the early history of flight. Recommended!
Incredible Journey: The Story Of Alcock And Brown (Carolyn Sloan) $6 HB EC An account of the first flight over the Atlantic Ocean, from Canada to England, made in 1919 by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. Lovely picture book with magnificent paintings as well as original photos and artifacts relating to the flight. Great for studies of the early history of flight. Recommended! http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/6360571/used/The%20Story%20of%20Alcock%20and%20Brown Amy Johnson (Eva Bailey) $3 HB EC (Ex lib) A biography written for children as a story giving the reader an idea of the adventurous spirit of this courageous and determined woman. It describes her many triumphs and achievements in the field of aviation at a time when women's lives were limited by custom and social class. Complete with photographs, maps and drawings. 9+ Badge Of Honour (David Wiseman) $5 HBDJ EC An impulsive prank leaves an English schoolgirl in possession of a box of personal effects belonging to a now-dead suffragette, whose diary fills her mind and her dreams with vivid scenes of the struggle for women's voting rights in England in 1909. 10+ Radical Red (James Duffy) $5 HBDJ EC (Ex lib) Set in 1894, this historical docunovel combines an episode in the struggle for women's suffrage with a family drama of what it was like to grow up female at the time. A chance encounter between Connor O'Shea, 12, and Miss Bertha Hall, one of "Aunt Susan's girls," changes the lives of the girl and her mother forever. Susan B. Anthony is in town to convince the state constitutional convention that women are entitled to vote. Connor (and her mother's) feminist sympathies grow as her father, the sergeant of the capitol police, becomes increasingly antagonistic. He isn't able to vote, either, since he can't read; but he is happy to rely on his friend Senator Phelan to guide him, and gets abusive when his wife and daughter disagree. 11+ http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Red-James-Duffy/dp/068419533X A Question Of Courage (Marjorie Darke) $3 PB GC Emily could hardly credit her own daring – here she was, Emily Parker from the back streets of Birmingham, carrying a placard that boldly read VOTES FOR WOMEN! As she gets increasingly involved in Mrs. Pankhurst’s Suffragette Movement, the danger and violence grows, but for her the choice of continuing the fight became a question of courage. 11+ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Question-Courage-Marjorie-Darke/dp/1903015219 (Cover different) Little Brother (Allan Baillie) $3 PB VGC It’s Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge are now in power. Vithy has lost everyone and everything he loved – except his older brother Mang. They’ve escaped from certain execution, but the brothers are separated and Vithy struggles to escape to the border to freedom and find his brother. 10+ http://www.allanbaillie.com.au/news.htmThe Clay Marble (Minfong Ho) $4 PB EC How do you explain war to a child? How do you make sense of horror and loss? This fine book tries to answer these difficult questions. Written for young readers, and set in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1980, it tells the story of Dara, a young Cambodian girl who is forced out of her village by war. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, 12-year-old Dara, her older brother Sarun, and their mother journey to the Thai border in search of food. 10+ http://www.amazon.ca/Clay-Marble-Minfong-Ho/dp/0374412294 (Cover different)
Channeary (Steve Tolbert) $4 PB VGC Channeary's calm regular life as a child in a fisher family is destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. Her brothers and sisters are taken away but Channeary, with her mother, escapes to the Thai border. After many difficulties she ends up in Australia as the child of a Tasmanian couple. She faces cultural shock and racism but an old fisherman helps her cope. 10+ AUSTRALIAN MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD SHORT LIST http://www.southcom.com.au/~stolbert/#Channeary (Cover different) Only The Heart (Brian Caswell and ) $5 PB VGC Toan traces his family's story beginning when he was five years old and including their escape from war-torn Vietnam and life as refugees in Malaysia before finally immigrating to Australia. They leave behind everything, pursuing a dangerous route to escape the devastated ruins of their homeland and the corruption they see taking over. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Only-the-Heart/Brian-Caswell/e/9780702229275A Boat To Nowhere (Maureen Crane Wartski) $3 PB GC In their small, isolated Vietnamese village, Mai and her family thought themselves safe from war. Then Kien, a 14 year old orphan, stumbled into their lives bringing tales of terrible conquerers taking over the forest villages. Eventually, Kien, Mai, her grandfather and her little brother escape in a village fishing boat to sail to another country, becoming boat people and enduring the perils of pirates, storms, sickness and starvation to find a land where they could be free. 10+ http://www.amazon.com/Boat-Nowhere-Signet-Books/dp/0451162854
The Far Side Of The Lough: Stories From An Irish Childhood (Polly Devlin) $3 PB VGC This collection of fictional short stories are based on her own childhood in Ardboe, in Northern Ireland. The narrator is a little girl whose mother has died and who is being looked after by a strong, plain-speaking country woman called Mary Ellen Martin. Mary-Ellen's father was a fisherman on the Lough and their lives were simple. She tells her small charge about the characters who made up the little community: Old Forbie, Jem the Bridge, Barney Dugh, Mickel Heron. Her 'world' is her immediate environment: the car lane, the pin tree, Golloman's Point, the graveyard and the Lough. Mary-Ellen's tales are full of the colloquialisms of Northern Ireland. Beautifully and seamlessly told, they evoke a time long since passed and a child's unique view of the world. http://www.obrien.ie/book270.cfm (Cover different)
Drumshee Timeline Series “The Drumshee Rebels” (Cora Harrison) $4 PB EC The Drumshee Chronicles and Timeline Series are historical novels for children which tell the history of Ireland through two millennia. It is 1921 and Ireland is in a state of struggle to win independence from the British. The War of Independence is fought everywhere and Drumshee in County Clare is no exception. This eighth book in the Drumshee Timeline series is set in one of the most turbulent periods in Ireland's history. This time and the event are seen through the eyes of the children who inhabit the fort, castle or cottage at Drumshee. 9+ http://www.coraharrison.com/drumshee/rebels.html
The Twelfth Day Of July (Joan Lingard) $3 PB GC It all started with a trip into Protestant territory by Kevin and his Catholic friends to daub paint on a wall. But feelings run high in Belfast and in the end paint-splashing turned into something far more dangerous. The only good thing to come out of the reckless trip was that it brought kevin into contact with Sadie Jackson – and that was to change his life. 12+ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twelfth-July-Puffin-Teenage-Fiction/dp/0140371753 (Cover art different)
Across The Barricades (Joan Lingard – the second book in the above trilogy) $3 PB VC (Tanning) Kevin and Sadie both know their relationship is dangerous. In these terrifying times in Belfast, no Catholic boy and Protestant girl go out together without resentment and even violence flaring up around them. So what will happen if they insist on seeing each other? 12+ http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/joan-lingard/across-barricades.htm (Cover art different)
The Deserter (Nigel Gray) $5 PB EC (Ex lib) Four British children find themselves sheltering a deserter from the British Army in Northern Ireland. He doesn't believe the English Army belongs in Ireland. Should they betray him to the police? Or, should they help him escape? 9+ Frankie’s Story (Catherine Sefton) $4 HB EC (Ex lib) Shows the effects of the political and social situation in Northern Ireland today on young people at crucial moments in the development of their personal lives through the story of Frankie, a teenager living in Ballbeg, a small town in Norther Ireland. 12+ The Rose In My Carpets (Rukhsana Khan) $5 HB GC (Ex lib) This realistic story follows a day in the life of a young Afghani refugee who takes solace in the beautiful carpets he weaves. In a recurring nightmare, the boy narrator flees with his mother and younger sister, Maha, from the bomber planes that killed his father, then awakes to find himself in a safe but impoverished camp. Picture book 6-9 YO http://www.amazon.com/Roses-My-Carpets-Rukhsana-Khan/dp/0823413993 No Gun For Asmir (Christobel Mattingley) $5 PB VGC War has come to Asmir's home in Sarajevo. He is torn from his father, his home and everything he has known. He becomes a refugee. This is a story of courage you will never forget. 9+ http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Gun-Asmir-Puffin-Books/dp/0140367292 Zlata’s Diary (Zlata Filipovic) $4 HB EC (Ex lib), $3 PB EC In November 1991 Zlata Filipovic, not quite eleven years old, started to write a diary. She lived with her parents in Sarajevo, Bosnia, part of the old Yugoslavia, and her life was quite ordinary. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a chemist so the family lived a comfortable life. Zlata wrote about herself, her friends, her holidays, parties and all the little things that made up her life – until 5 April 1992 when her life was turned upside down. The war that had started over the break up of Yugoslavia spread to Sarajevo and for Zlata “That was the day that time stood still”. Her diary changed dramatically as she began to record the horrors of war – the fear during bombing, hiding in the cellar, the gradual disintegration of life in a city without food, electricity or water and worst of all, the death of her best friend in a bomb attack. 10+ http://www.amazon.com/Zlatas-Diary-Childs-Wartime-SarajevoRevised/dp/0143036874/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5164673-2540815?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190338198&sr=1-1 (Cover different) The China Coin (Allan Baillie) $3 PB EC As Leah steps into China in 1989 with her mother Joan, loaded with her father’s obsession with the blackened fragment of an ancient coin, Leah finds a vast and bewildering land. The mystery of the coin and a family that she doesn’t know draws her across China to the terror of Tiananmen Square. 10+ http://www.amazon.com/China-Coin-Allan-Baillie/dp/0140347534/ref=sr_1_2/002-5164673-2540815?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190338102&sr=1-2