Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse is a talented local author whose children’s books have won some of the most prestigious awards.

Her first book, Wish on a Unicorn, was published in 1991. Out of the Dust won the Newbery Award in 1998 as well as the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

Her latest book, due out in October, is called Hans Christian Andersen: A Celebration.

Aleutian Sparrow

“Your work, Vera,” Alfred’s grandfather told me, “your work is to know the ways of our people.”

In June of 1942, seven months after attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy invaded Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. For nine thousand years the Aleut people had lived and thrived on these treeless, windswept lands. Within days of the first attack, the entire native population living west of Unimak Island was gathered up and evacuated to relocation centers in the dense forests of Alaska’s Southeast.

With resilience, compassion, and humor the Aleuts responded to the sorrows of upheaval and dislocation. This is Vera’s story, but it is woven from the same fabric as the stories of displaced peoples throughout history. It chronicles the struggle to survive and to keep community and heritage intact despite harsh conditions in an alien environment.

In a luminous novel of unrhymed verse, Newbery winner Karen Hesse brings to light this little-known episode from America’s past.

Come On, Rain

A stunning story of life in the Warsaw Ghetto by a Newbery Medalist, who based this story on a short article about cats outfoxing the Gestapo at the train station in Warsaw during WWII. The result is this stirring account of a Jewish girl’s involvement in the Resistance. Full color.

Just Juice

Letters and numbers still don’t make sense to Juice Faulstich. She’d rather skip school and spend the day at home in the North Carolina hills, anyway. But when the bank threatens to repossess her family’s home, Juice faces her first life-sized problem.

Out of the Dust

A poem cycle that reads as a novel, Out of the Dust tells the story of Billie Jo, a girl who struggles to help her family survive the dustbowl years of the Depression. Fighting against the elements on her Oklahoma farm, Billie Jo takes on even more responsibilities when her mother dies in a tragic accident. A testament to the American spirit, this novel is an instant classic.

Witness

Leanora Sutter. Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves… These characters 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 African-American girl, and six-year-old Esther, who is Jewish.