Nory Ryan's Song


Book Description

Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.




Maggie's Door


Book Description

We will dance on the cliffs of Brooklyn. Maggie’s Door is the story of the journey from Ireland to America told by both Nory and her neighbor and friend Sean Red Mallon, two different stories with the same destination—the home of Nory’s sister Maggie, at 416 Smith Street, Brooklyn, America. Patricia Reilly Giff calls upon her long research into Irish history and her great powers as a storyteller in this deeply involving, riveting stand-alone companion novel to Nory Ryan’s Song.




Water Street


Book Description

Brooklyn, 1875: Bird Mallon lives on Water Street where you can see the huge towers of the bridge to Manhattan being built. Bird wants nothing more in life than to be brave enough to be a healer, like her mother, Nory, to help her sister Annie find love, and to convince her brother, Hughie, to stop fighting for money with his street gang. And of course, she wishes that a girl would move into the empty apartment upstairs so that she can have a new friend close by. But Thomas Neary and his Pop move in upstairs. Thomas who writes about his life in his journal--his father who spends each night at the Tavern down the street, the mother he wishes he had, and the Mallon family downstairs that he desperately wants to be a part of. Thomas, who has a secret that only Bird suspects, and who turns out to be the best friend Bird could ever have.




Lily's Crossing


Book Description

This “brilliantly told” (New York Times) Newbery Honor Book gives readers a sense of what it was like to be on the American home front while our soldiers were away fighting in World War II. As in past years, Lily will spend the summer in Rockaway, in her family’s summer house by the Atlantic Ocean. But this summer of 1944, World War II has changed everyone’s life. Lily’s best friend, Margaret, has moved to a wartime factory town, and, much worse, Lily’s father is going overseas to the war. There’s no one Lily’s age in Rockaway until the arrival of Albert, a refugee from Hungary with a secret sewn into his coat. Albert has lost most of his family in the war; he’s been through things Lily can’t imagine. But soon they form a special friendship. Now Lily and Albert have secrets to share: They both have told lies, and Lily has told one that may cost Albert his life.




Winter Sky


Book Description

Siria loves everyone at Pop's firehouse. And she loves the stars in the winter sky. Her mother, who died, named her after Sirius—the Dog Star, brightest in January. But starry nights can fill with flames, and Siria sneaks out to chase the firetrucks. If she's there, everyone will be safe. Still, Siria's not brave like Pop. Her best friend Douglas used to chase with her, and it wasn't so scary. But she did something wrong; they're not friends now. This winter, Siria must learn to be brave. Because she's got to fix things with Douglas; and when Pop is injured, she needs courage, and her friends, more than ever.




A House of Tailors


Book Description

SEWING! NO ONE could hate it more than Dina Kirk. Endless tiny stitches, button holes, darts. Since she was tiny, she’s worked in her family’s dressmaking business, where the sewing machine is a cranky member of the family. When 13-year-old Dina leaves her small town in Germany to join her uncle’s family in Brooklyn, she turns her back on sewing. Never again! But looking for a job leads her right back to the sewing machine. Why did she ever leave home? Here she is, still with a needle and thread—and homesick to boot. She didn’t know she could be this homesick, but she didn’t know she could be so brave either, as she is standing up to an epidemic or a fire. She didn’t know she could grow so close to her new family or to Johann, the young man from the tailor’s shop. And she didn’t know that sewing would reveal her own wonderful talent—and her future. In Dina, the beloved writer Patricia Reilly Giff has created one of her most engaging and vital heroines. Readers will enjoy seeing 1870s Brooklyn through Dina’s eyes, and share her excitement as she discovers a new world.




R My Name Is Rachel


Book Description

Rachel, Cassie, and Joey live in the city with their Pop, until Pop's search for work lands the family on a run down farm. Dreamy Rachel loves to read, and doesn't know much about the country. Times are hard there, too—the school and library are closed. When Pop gets work near Canada, he has to leave the children on the farm alone. For two months! But Rachel's the oldest, and she'll make sure they're all right. Somehow.




Genevieve's War


Book Description

In this companion to the Newbery Honor-winning Lily's Crossing, thirteen-year-old Genevieve risks everything to defy the Nazis and join the French Resistance. Winner of the Christopher Award! It's not always thinking of being happy. Doing the right thing will make you happy. Despite the farm-work and her irritable grandmother Memé, Genevieve thinks she may have found a new home in Alsace, France, where she spent the summer of 1939. Without much to return to in New York, Gen is ready to see if this new life will make her happy. But then World War II erupts. The Nazis conquer France. Now everyone in Alsace must speak German, act German, and think German--or else. Even worse, a cold Nazi officer has commandeered a room in Memé's farmhouse--and he can tell that Gen and her grandmother aren't loyal to the Reich. But Gen won't be cowed. And when her friend Rémy commits an act of sabotage, she hides him in the last place the Germans will look--in the attic, right above the Nazi's head. For more thrilling historical fiction, don't miss Island War, a survival story set in the remote Aleutian Islands, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and A Slip of a Girl, a novel in verse about the Irish Land War of the late 19th century.




All the Way Home


Book Description

It’s August 1941, and Brick and Mariel both love the Brooklyn Dodgers. Brick listens to their games on the radio in Windy Hill, in upstate New York, where his family has an apple orchard; Mariel, once a polio patient in the hospital in Windy Hill, lives in Brooklyn near the Dodgers’ home, Ebbets Field. She was adopted by Loretta, a nurse at the hospital, and has never known what happened to her own mother. Someday, somehow, she plans to return to Windy Hill and find out. When a fire destroys their orchard, Brick’s parents must leave the farm to find work. They send him to live in Brooklyn with their friend Loretta, even though Brick knows that their elderly neighbors need his help to pick what’s left of the apples. The only good thing about Brooklyn is seeing the Dodgers play–that, and his friendship with Mariel. Maybe, together, they’ll find a way to return to Windy Hill, save the harvest, and learn the truth about Mariel’s past.




December Secrets


Book Description

Emily is stuck with crybaby Jill Simon as her "secret Pal" to be kind to for the whole month of December.