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Blue Willow

Doris Gates · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Just Juice

Karen Hesse · 138 pages

Realizing that her father's lack of work has endangered her family, nine-year-old Juice decides that she must return to school and learn to read in order to help their chances of surviving and keeping their house.

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmMiddle Grade
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Sounder

William H. Armstrong · 116 pages

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and through his relationship with his devoted dog Sounder.

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmMiddle Grade
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Lassie Come Home

Eric Knight · 239 pages

A collie named lassie has to be sold because her family are having bad times . Lassie escapes twice but when her new owner takes her to a place too far to run from will lassie be able to make the journey back to her home ? A collie undertakes a thousand-mile journey in order to once again meet her former master at the school gate. Lassie is Joe's prize collie and constant companion. But when Jo

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistChildren'sMiddle Grade
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By the Shores of Silver Lake

Laura Ingalls Wilder · 290 pages

The Ingalls family had fared badly in Plum Creek, Minnesota. They were in debt. Mary was blind now. So Pa went West to work at a railroad camp in Dakota Territory where he could make as much as fifty dollars a month! Then he sent for his wife and four children, and they became the first settlers in the new town of De Smet. But the railroad brought hordes of land-hungry people from the East. Had Pa

Working-Class ProtagonistMiddle GradeRural FarmChildren's
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Gather

Kenneth M. Cadow · 325 pages

Publisher Annotation: A resourceful teenager in rural Vermont struggles to hold on to the family home while his mom recovers from addiction in this striking debut novel.

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmLoss of a Home
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That Scatterbrain Booky

Bernice Thurman Hunter

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Bridge to Terabithia

Katherine Paterson · 144 pages

The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm.

Working-Class ProtagonistRural FarmMiddle GradeChildren's
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Esperanza Rising

Pam Munoz Ryan · 262 pages

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

Economic InequalityRural FarmMiddle GradeLoss of a Home
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A Year Down Yonder

Richard Peck · 130 pages

Mary Alice's childhood summers in Grandma Dowdel's sleepy Illinois town were packed with enough drama to fill the double bill of any picture show. But now she is fifteen, and faces a whole long year with Grandma, a woman well known for shaking up her neighbors-and everyone else! All Mary Alice can know for certain is this: when trying to predict how life with Grandma might turn out . . . better no

Economic InequalityRural FarmMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Five Little Peppers and How They Grew

Margaret Sidney · 226 pages

A fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman.

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistMiddle GradeChildren's
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The Mighty Miss Malone

Christopher Paul Curtis · 313 pages

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl · 161 pages

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last!But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-t

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityMiddle GradeChildren's
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Half Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls · 313 pages

It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decay

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmHistorical Fiction
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The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936-1941: The Grapes of Wrath, The Harvest Gypsies, The Long Valley, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

John Steinbeck · 1,067 pages

This second volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features his acknowledged masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Written in an incredibly compressed five-month period, the novel had an electrifying impact upon publication in 1939, unleashing a political storm with its vision of America's dispossessed struggling for survival. It continues to exert a powerful influ

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmLoss of a Home
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Crenshaw

Katherine Applegate · 250 pages

From the author of The One and Only Ivan, winner of the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience. Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There's no more money for rent. And not much for food, either. His parents, his little sister, and their dog may have to live in their minivan. Again. Crenshaw is a ca

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityMiddle GradeChildren's
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The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages

This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmHistorical Fiction
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The Velvet Room

Zilpha Keatley Snyder · 216 pages

The Williams' family lives a rough life, living out of their Model-T as their father searches for work. Though Robin loves her family dearly, she's always felt a little different from them--always restless and longing for things she can't explain. When the family finally settles down to work the orchards of the abandoned Las Palermas mansion, Robin discovers a wonderful, secret place--the Velvet R

Working-Class ProtagonistRural FarmMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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Necessary Lies

Diane Chamberlain · 370 pages

Caring for her family on their mid-20th-century tobacco farm after the loss of her parents, 15-year-old Ivy connects with Grace County social worker Jane, who strains her personal and professional relationships with her advocacy of Ivy's family, whose dark secrets test Jane's resolve against racial tensions and state-mandated sterilizations.

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityRural FarmHistorical Fiction
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A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt

C. Coco De Young

Economic InequalityWorking-Class ProtagonistMiddle GradeHistorical Fiction
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith · 443 pages

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchant

Working-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Good Night, Mr. Tom

Michelle Magorian · 318 pages

During World War II, an aging recluse's stony heart is softened by his friendship with a young evacuee from London.

Rural FarmMiddle GradeChildren'sHistorical Fiction
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Heidi Grows Up

Charles Tritten · 192 pages

Rural FarmMiddle GradeChildren'sHistorical Fiction
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The Prince and the Pauper

Mark Twain · 270 pages

Economic InequalityMiddle GradeChildren'sHistorical Fiction
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Rilla of Ingleside

L.M. Montgomery · 277 pages

Fifteen-year-old Rilla, the daughter of Anne Shirley Blythe, grows from a carefree, irresponsible girl into a strong and capable young woman during the war years, 1914-1918.

Rural FarmMiddle GradeChildren'sHistorical Fiction

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