Karen Hesse

Vera, a young Aleut girl who lives with an elderly couple on a larger island so that she can attend school, returns home for the summer of 1942 to visit her mother and friends. But when the Japanese launch an air attack on the Aleutian Islands, the U.S. government reacts by "evacuating" most of...

Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse recreates the body and soul-renewing experience of a summer downpour after a sweltering city heat wave....

Leanora Sutter, Esther Hirsh, Merlin Van Tornhout and Johnny Reeves are among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe, especially the two youngest, twelve-year old Leanora, an...

In 1767, 11-year-old Nicholas Young stowed away on Captain James Cook's "Endeavour." Cook's three-year mission was secret: he was charged by the British Navy to search for a lost continent, believed to be located between the southern tip of South America and New Zealand. Young's journal charts...

If Nyle lets herself care for Ezra, she knows he’ll end up leaving her, too....

When her sister Hannie finds a stuffed unicorn, Mags’s wishes start to come true....

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919....

Radley's parents had warned her that all hell would break loose if the American People's Party took power. And now, with the president assassinated and the government cracking down on citizens, the news is filled with images of vigilante groups, frenzied looting, and police raids. It seems as if...

The Coast Guard is shocked when they rescue a child from the waters off Florida. Her long, wild hair and the barnacles attached to her skin initially lead them to think that they have discovered a mermaid. However, they are even more amazed to discover that this is a young girl that has been...

On that day in 1903, fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom's life changed irrevocably when his parents—Russian immigrants—created the first teddy bear. No longer did the Michtom's gather family and friends around the kitchen table to talk. No longer was Joseph at leisure to play stickball with...