Fresh Reads, Honest reviews, Educator-approved
How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood—and the brilliant doctor who defied them. After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine.
On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone! No one knew who was behind the heist.
A true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust—one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape. It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolph (Rudi) Vrba has made up his mind. After barely surviving nearly two years in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, he knows he must escape. Even if death is more likely.
It’s 1917, and World War I is at its zenith when Hazel and James first catch sight of each other at a London party. She’s a shy and talented pianist; he’s a newly minted soldier with dreams of becoming an architect. When they fall in love, it’s immediate and deep–and cut short when James is shipped off to the killing fields.
Jennifer A. Nielsen’s Resistance breathes fresh, thrilling life into a crowded historical fiction market. Focusing on the harrowing journeys of a teenage courier in Nazi-occupied Poland, this masterfully researched novel perfectly balances heart-pounding suspense with the devastating realities of the Holocaust. An absolute must-have for middle and high school library collections, especially for fans of fast-paced survival stories and historical narratives like those of Alan Gratz.