Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp


Stanley, Jerry. Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp. 1992. Lexile 1120.

This wonderful narrative focuses on a unique project in California in 1940.  While it gives background about the Dust Bowl, the focus is a school built and maintained by students, with help from adults. The Farm Security Administration erected a number of camps in the San Joaquin valley in California to provide emergency shelter for “Okies,” poor farmers and their families who had been driven out of Oklahoma by the dust storms. When such a camp was built near a town called Weedpatch, the town's hostile residents didn’t want to finance a school for the newcomers’ children. Local school superintendent Leo Hart spearheaded a movement for the children to get educated by building their own school along with teachers and volunteers. The children practiced useful skills and gained self-confidence as they learned carpentry, plumbing, and wiring; some learned agricultural skills to grow food for the schoolchildren. Black-and-white photographs show them hard at work in this inspiring, highly readable story. Bibliographic essay and index.

Reading Std #9 for grades 6-8:Compare/contrast texts on similar themes or topics.  Have students compare the scope, structure and visual components of this book with the equally excellent but longer and broader Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl by Albert Marrin.

The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from the Revolution to the 21st Century


Janeczko, Paul B. The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from the Revolution to the 21st Century. 2010. 256pp. Lexile 1200.

This YALSA Nonfiction Award Honor Book will appeal to spy and war buffs alike.  Of the twelve chapters about spies, some highlight individuals such as Civil War spy Rose O'Neale Greenhow and CIA agent Aldrich Ames.  Other chapters describe a group or project including the 1950s Berlin spy tunnel.  Between chapters are extensive sidebars on specific topics related to spying: invisible ink, gadgets and gizmos, spy satellites, and more.  Janeczko's smooth writing incorporates intriguing details about people and danger in each story.  The chapters can be read separately, in conjunction with a time period from the Revolutionary War to the 1980s, or read in order to get a sense of the changes over time to the dark game.

Nonfiction Tie-ins  A number of other nonfiction titles expand on topics in this book.  Readers interested in reading about Revolutionary War spies in more depth should try Thomas Allen's excellent George Washington, Spymaster.  The chapter on Benedict Arnold can be paired with Jim Murphy's The Real Benedict Arnold or Steve Sheinkin's The Notorious Benedict Arnold.  Janeczko also has an earlier book titled Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing.


Fiction Tie-in  Fans of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series, which begins with Stormbreaker, might enjoy this book.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith


Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith. 2009. 320pp. Lexile 1020.

It’s a rare young adult nonfiction book that combines science and romance!  This one does so beautifully.  It provides a fine introduction to Charles Darwin and his work but goes beyond that to show his views of religion and how they differed from those of his beloved wife, Emma, who worried that her husband’s work would undermine the religious tenets she valued.  Fans of Regency novels will be attracted by the elegant silhouettes of the Charles and Emma on the cover, with a primate loping into the picture behind Darwin.  Heiligman does a masterful job with her topic, choosing perfect quotes from Darwin’s writings and diaries, and the letters between husband and wife.  The book opens with Darwin making a list with one side of the page labeled “Marry” and the other, “Not Marry.”  He includes under reasons not to marry, “Cannot read in the Evenings—fatness & idleness—Anxiety & responsibility—less money for books.” Such well-chosen details fill this exemplary book, which won the first YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults.

Reading Std #9 for grades 6-8: Compare/contrast texts on similar themes or topics.  Have students compare the information in this biography about Darwin’s theory of evolution with that offered in Laurence Pringle’s Billions of Years, Amazing Changes, at a similar lexile level and published one year after the Heiligman book.


Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl


Bolden, Tonya. Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl. 2004. 48pp. Lexile 1190.

Much of what teens read about black history concerns slavery, racial bias, and/or the Civil Rights Movement.  This short, inspiring book offers a look at a girl in a middle class family in the nineteenth century.  Maritcha Remond Lyons, whose striking image looks out at readers from a photograph on the cover, was born in 1848 to parents who ran a prosperous boarding house in New York City.  When their business was ruined by the Draft Riots during the Civil War, they moved to Providence, R.I., where her father started an ice cream and catering business, and her mother worked as a hairdresser.  When Maritcha found that Providence had no high school open to blacks, she wouldn't accept being shut out of an education.  She took her cause to the legislature and succeeded in persuading them of the justness of her cause, after which she passed a rigorous entry exam.  She went on to become a teacher and then an assistant principal in Brooklyn for fifty years.  Bolden based this eye-opening book on an unpublished memoir Lyons wrote for her own family.  The book, which puts the subject’s life in historical context, is enriched with wonderful photographs and etchings from the era. An author’s note discusses Bolden's research and some of her decisions about what to include in the book.

Reading Std #2: Determine central ideas or themes and analyze their development; summarize key supporting details and ideas.  Although Maritcha Remond Lyons as a free black was in a better position than those who were slaves when she was born, she and her family nevertheless suffered from racism in a variety of ways.  Have students trace that racism through this short book, a task possible even for less skilled readers.

Fiction Tie-In  Maritcha's family lost their business during New York's Draft Riots.  The novel Riot by Walter Dean Myers uses a screenplay format in its dramatic look at the riots through the eyes of several characters, most importantly, a biracial girl whose family runs an inn in Manhattan.

This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie


Partridge, Elizabeth. This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie. 2002. 217pp. Lexile 1020.

This thoughtful biography of a complicated man highlights Guthrie’s talents as a folksinger and songwriter, and his commitment to political causes.  At the same time, the author discusses Guthrie’s personal problems, such as the ways he let down his wives and children.  Hardship and pain occurred throughout his life: his sister and one of his daughters died in fires.  His mother had undiagnosed Huntington’s disease, which affected Guthrie as well and ended his career.  Partridge sets Guthrie’s life in the social and political context of the 1930s through 1960s.  Multiple photographs, reproductions of Guthrie’s own witty drawings, and excerpts of lyrics enrich the text.  This is listed in Common Core's Appendix B.  It was the winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and one of five National Book Award for Young People nominees.

Reading Std #7:  Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, visually and quantitatively, and in words. Compare the Partridge biography with the much-lauded 1976 film about Guthrie, Bound for Glory (PG rated).