Historical Fiction United States

The New York Times best-selling author of Jumanji and The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg has garnered the National Book Award, multiple Caldecott Medals, and the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. Queen of the Falls highlights the death-defying attempt of 62-year-old former charm school teacher Annie Edson Taylor to be the first woman to survive the perilous plunge over Niagara Falls.

Roderick Blockstone es un apuesto joven que lo tiene todo; una hermosa y encantadora esposa, un puesto en el Parlamento, y una gran finca. Pero muy pronto se convierte en un joven malhumorado cuando su amada esposa muere en el parto de su hija. Su primera y única hija, Ann, crece traviesa y desobediente, ignorando descaradamente las lecciones de etiqueta que recibe de su tutora. Solitaria y desenfrenada, Ann se hace amiga de Henry, el muchacho del establo.

America meant "freedom" to the immigrants of the early 1900s - but a freedom very different from what they expected. Cities were crowded and jobs were scare. Children had to work selling newspapers, delivering goods, and laboring sweatshops. In this touching book, Newberry Medalist Russell Freedman offers a rare glimpse of what it meant to be a young newcomer to America.

Many people came to America in the early 1900s looking for jobs, opportunity, and freedom, and a lot of them were kids. But what happened to all these immigrant children after they passed inspection at New York’s Ellis Island - that is, if they passed inspection? Life was not easy for immigrants. Large families lived in small, one-room tenement apartments with failing plumbing and few windows. Children had to go to school with kids from different countries and learn to read and write a new language.