WELCOME TO AUSTRALIAN USED HOMESCHOOL BOOKS!
HISTORICAL FICTION AMERICA - THE PIONEERS & EARLY AMERICAN LIFE
Everything From A Nail To A Coffin (Iris Van Rynbach) $6 HBDJ VGC A true story, this book traces the history of a building, and the stories of the people who owned and worked in it, on Main Street in Glastonbury, Connecticut, from its construction in 1874 to the present day. An accurate portrayal of change in America, this book resonates with the ties that bind a community. 11+ Recommended!
Apples To Oregon (Deborah Hopkinson) $6 PB BRAND NEW When Papa decides to move from Iowa to Oregon his biggest concern is not his family but his apples--and his peaches, plums, grapes, cherries, and pears! He constructs a dirt-filled wagon to transport his fruit saplings, while his family travels in a smaller cart. Along the way, they encounter the requisite Oregon Trail hardships, but luckily daughter Delicious is clever enough to help her family and they eventually arrive safely at their new home. Based loosely on the life of Henderson Luelling, who founded Oregon's first nursery in 1847, Hopkinson's alliterative tall tale is rich in language that begs to be read out loud ("'Guard the grapes! Protect the peaches!' Daddy howled"), and Carpenter's colourful oil paintings add to the exaggerated fun. Some apple facts and a historical note are appended.
Going West (Martin Waddell/Philippe Dupasquier) $6 HB EC A little girl chronicles the hardships encountered during her family's journey west by wagon train. Lovely, very detailed picture book, similar to Roland Harvey’s books. 6-10 YO
Wild Boy (Thomas Fall) $2 PB GC (Cover crease) Set in Texas, 1870, the story of a boy named Roberto who is a white, but has a great comradeship with the Indian tribes that live near his grandfather’s fort 9+
Danger On The Trail (Mildred Houghton Comfort) $2 PB FC (Cover wear and light tanning) 9+
The Barn (Avi) $4 PB NEW (Teacher name on inturn, but new) After their father suffers a "fit of palsy," three motherless children try to keep their struggling farm going in 1855, Oregon. Although nine-year-old Benjamin is the youngest, he is the cleverest of the three, and also the one who truly believes that his father can recover. After Benjamin figures out a way to communicate with him, he convinces the others that if they can build the barn that their father had been planning, he will somehow find a reason to live. 9+
The Journey Home (Isabelle Holland) $3 PB EC After their mother dies, Maggie Lavin, 12, and her younger sister, Annie, leave the slums of New York City on one of the orphan wagon trains that delivered thousands of tenement youngsters to adoptive homes during the second half of the 19th century. Taken in by a childless couple, they begin a new life on the Kansas prairie, far different from all that they have known. 9+
Our Only May Amelia (Jennifer Holm) $4 PB VGC It isn’t easy being a pioneer in the state of Washington in 1899, but it’s particularly hard when you are the only girl ever born in the new settlement. With seven older brothers and a love of adventure, May Amelia Jackson just can’t seem to abide her family’s insistence that she behave like a Proper Young Lady! Not when there’s fishing to be done, sheep to be herded! 10+ NEWBERY HONOR
Miss Hickory (Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, illustrations by Ruth Gannett (My Father’s Dragon) $5 PB EC Miss Hickory is a doll whose body is an apple-wood twig and whose head is a hickory nut, and whose house is made out of corncobs. How will she survive a harsh New Hampshire winter all alone? A charming story....NEWBERY MEDAL 6-10 years
Molly’s Pilgrim (Barbara Cohen) $5 HB EC (Ex school library), $4 PB EC Molly and her family have moved to America from Russia to find freedom. But the other kids in Molly’s class make fun of her accent and clothes. At Thanksgiving everyone has to bring a Pilgrim doll to class, but the doll Molly’s mother makes looks like a Russian peasant girl. It doesn’t look like the Pilgrims in Molly’s books at all. How will she ever fit in? But something wonderful happens at school to make Molly and her classmates learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving. 6-9 YO.
Addie’s Forever Friend (Laurie Lawlor) $5 HB EC (Ex lib) While her father is looking for a homestead in the Dakotas, Addie and her mother and brothers spend the summer with her aunt and uncle in Sabula, Iowa, where she rescues her best friend during a flood and where her baby sister is born. 7-10 YO
Lysbet And The Fire Kittens (Marietta Moskin) $3 PB GC Fire! Fire! Lysbet’s house is on fire and her cat, Stuyver, is inside! Ma and Pa are away and there is no one Lysbet can turn to. She must save the house and save Stuyver too—all by herself! This story is about a Dutch girl, named Lysbet, but it does not take place in Holland. It takes place in one of the American colonies at a time long, long ago—more than 300 hundred years ago, in the year 1662. At that time, there were many people from Holland living in a colony called New Amsterdam. Later, New Amsterdam became New York City. 5-9 YO
Trouble River (Betsy Byars) $4 PB NEW (Name on top page edges) When he builds his raft, a twelve-year-old boy never dreams that it will serve as the sole means of escape for him and his grandmother when hostile Indians threaten their prairie cabin. 9+
SRA Reader Young Kit Carson (Augusta Stevenson – author of the Childhood Of Famous Americans series) $2 PB FC Kit became one of America’s most famous scouts but, even as a boy, he was respected for his courage and skill. 6-10 YO
Just Juice (Karen Hesse) $4 PB EC The eight-member Faulstich family, residents of an Appalachian hill village perhaps in Kentucky or West Virginia, has learned to endure impoverished conditions ever since Pa got laid off from the mine. Only the children are guaranteed a "sandwich" each day (bread spread so thin with jelly "you can hardly find the purple"); there are no regular doctor or dentist visits, even for Ma, who is carrying another baby; and the only surprise presents at Christmas are the ones the older girls make at school. 9+
More Than Halfway There (Janet Halliday Ervin) $3 HB VGC (Inscription on first page) “There ain’t nothing to schooling. If there was, don’t you think I’d taken it up myself long ago?” Albert’s father tells him. But that October day in 1829, which started out so disappointing, turns out to be the most eventful day in young Albert’s life. He gets to meet a likeable, outspoken reading man, Abe Lincoln, who told him that once a person makes up his mind, he’s more than halfway there. Albert’s mind is made up to go to school, but he needs to convince his father. 10+
Nellie Bishop (Clara Gillow Clark) $4 HB EC (Ex lib) At 13, Nellie Bishop fights her parents' plan to marry her off for money to the highest bidder among the workmen in their Pennsylvania canal town. This fine historical novel, set in the 1880s, dramatizes the hardship among the labouring Irish at the time and shows a young girl trapped in a family brutalized by poverty. Nellie's mother takes in washing; her father drinks and gambles away the little they have; Nellie tries to protect her younger brother, Willie, from the harsh life that awaits him on the canal. 12+
Incident At Hawk’s Hill (Allan W. Eckert) $4 PB VGC Ben did not seem to be an ordinary six year old boy, but seemed to get along better with animals than with people. Then one June day in 1870, Ben wandered away from his home at Hawk’s Hill and disappeared without a trace into the waving prairie grass. How this shy, lonely boy survived most of the summer in the wilds by forging a bond with a female badger is a heart-warming story of human courage. Based on a true story. 10+ NEWBERY HONOR
Lyddie (Katherine Paterson – Author of Jacob Have I Loved) $5 HB EC, $4 PB VGC Her family scattered, Lyddie takes on work in the Masachusetts fabric mills six days a week in the hope of earning enough to reunite their family. Great industrial revolution scenes. 10+
Frozen Summer (Mary Jane Auch) $3 PB LIKE NEW It’s 1816, and Remembrance Nye and her family are enduring a cold, hard summer in their new home in western New York state. There’s barely any food since Papa’s crops were destroyed by the late frosts. Mem’s mother has never gotten used to their new home and finds it even harder to cope after she gives birth to baby Lily. Mem has to watch out for them as well as take over Mother’s chores. Then the worst happens: One stormy night Mama and Lily disappear. 11+
The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle (Avi) $3 PB VGC The year is 1832, and thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle is excited to make an interesting voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Liverpool, England, to her family in Providence, Rhode Island. Experience life aboard an early sailing ship as Charlotte dons the garb of a boy and overcomes danger and hardship to be reunited with her family. …….NEWBERY HONOR
Beyond The Burning Time (Kathryn Lasky) $5 PB BRAND NEW Mary Chase's sense of foreboding grows as, one by one, her friends fall prey to evidence of witchcraft and the innocent are identified as witches. She is horrified by the growing hysteria, and dismayed when her mother, who is a widow working a farm without a man, is cried out upon and arrested. An engrossing and exciting tale of an important era in American history. 10+
Mr. Mysterious & Company (Sid Fleischman) $2 PB GC Mr. Mysterious & Company, otherwise known as the Hackett family, is a traveling magic show making its way across the country toward California. When this family passes through town in their brightly painted wagon, anything can happen--even the capture of a notorious bandit, the Badlands Kid! Humorous. 10+
Green Grass Of Wyoming Part 1 (Mary O’Hara) $2 PB FC As the book opens, much has changed in the McLaughlin household. There is a baby daughter, Penelope, the apple of everyone's eye. The Goose Bar ranch is finally doing well, thanks in no small part to Ken and his wonder horse, the racing champion Thunderhead. 11+
Green Grass Of Wyoming Part 3 (Mary O’Hara) $2 PB FC This concludes the story of Flicka and Thunderhead. 11+
The Cowboy And The Black-Eyed Pea $3 PB EC This excellent retelling of Andersen's ``The Princess and the Pea'' has several unique elements. There is a reversal of sex roles, and the setting is the old West in Texas. Upon her father's death, Farethee Well inherits his herd of cattle, his horses, and his land. Before he dies, he tells her that many men will propose marriage because of her wealth; however, she should look for one who will love her for herself and also for a real cowboy. The young woman remembers her father saying that real cowboys are sensitive, so she places a black-eyed pea under the suitor's saddle blankets and asks him to ride around her ranch. 5-9 YO
Son Of A Gun (Janet & Allan Ahlberg) $3 HB GC (Ex lib) 10+ The Slocum Boys, a pair of mean and not too intelligent varmints, besiege Mrs Osgood Cabel Gains and her baby in their cabin at Benson's Bend while her husband the sheriff is out misdirecting his posse. The hero is eight-year-old Amos Gains, who escapes from the cabin and musters a rescue party comprising a couple of old-timers, a mountain man, a troupe of dancing girls, a division of US cavalry, and a band of Choctaws. It has great potential as a read-aloud and is warmly recommended to children and adults who don't mind seeing a happy ending come galloping over the horizon half way through the action. The story is illustrated with splendid miniature portraits and a very useful map.
Mark Twain And The Queens Of The Mississippi (Cheryl Harness) $6 HB EC The author uses Mark Twain as a focus for a historical look at the Mississippi River and the steamboats that plied her waters. She combines text, realistic art and maps and historical information with the story of Mark Twain’s life. Gorgeous format and paintings. Highly recommended! 6-10 YO