The life-changing story of a young boy’s struggle for survival in a Nazi-run concentration camp, narrated in the voice of Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum.When twelve-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is separated from his family and shipped off to the Blechhammer concentration camp, his life becomes a never-ending nightmare. With minimal food to eat and harsh living conditions threatening his health, Jack manages to survive by thinking of his family.In this Rober...

Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train.

It's April 1975 and the armies of North Vietnam are pushing into South Vietnam, leaving death and destruction in their wake. In a Saigon orphanage, eight-year-old Long waits and worries. He is a mixed-blood child, the son of a white American father and a Vietnamese mother. What kind of future can he have in a country ruled by North Vietnam-America's enemy? His only hope of escaping Saigon is via Operation Babylift-the U.S. government's rescue effort to airlift children like him out of harm...

Provoked by the horrors he saw every day, Charles Dickens wrote novels that were originally intended as instruments for social change—to save his country’s children.Charles Dickens is best known for his contributions to the world of literature, but during his young life, Dickens witnessed terrible things that stayed with him: families starving in doorways, babies being “dropped” on streets by mothers too poor to care for them, and a stunning lack of compassion from the upper class....

It's April 1975 and the armies of North Vietnam are pushing into South Vietnam, leaving death and destruction in their wake. In a Saigon orphanage, eight-year-old Long waits and worries. He is a mixed-blood child, the son of a white American father and a Vietnamese mother. What kind of future can he have in a country ruled by North Vietnam-America's enemy? His only hope of escaping Saigon is via Operation Babylift-the U.S. government's rescue effort to airlift children like him out of harm...

Meet Lucy McRae and two other young people, Willie Lord and Frederick Grant, all survivors of the Civil War's Battle for Vicksburg. In 1863, Union troops intend to silence the cannons guarding the Mississippi River at Vicksburg – even if they have to take the city by siege. To hasten surrender, they are shelling Vicksburg night and day. Terrified townspeople, including Lucy and Willie, take shelter in caves – enduring heat, snakes, and near suffocation. On the Union side, twelve-year-old F...

Andrea Warren shares with readers how she wrote her award-winning book, Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps, and how the book aligns with the Common Core State Standards for critical thinking, reading, speaking, and writing. She includes information not found in the book as to how she conducted research; interviewed her central character, Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum; selected the photos for the book; structured the book, and created the story's narrative voice. This guid...

Andrea Warren views her two non-fictions books about the orphan trains through the lens of the Common Core Standards, offering her insight as to how the books fulfill standards related to critical thinking, reading, speaking, and writing. She includes background history not in the books, and shares how she conducted research, interviewed the featured orphan train riders, found photos to illustrate her text, and then wrote the books. The guide includes many suggested exercises and reflectiv...

Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train to Texas.

"Think of it as a game, Jack…Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis."Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Here, simple existence is a constant struggle, and Jack must learn to live hour to hour, day to day. Despite intolerable conditions, he resolves not to hate his captors and vows to see his family again. But...

One by one, things that Norm and his Japanese American family took for granted are taken away. In a matter of months they, along with everyone else of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, are forced by the government to move to internment camps, leaving everything they have known behind. At the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming, Norm and his family live in one room in a tar paper barracks with no running water. There are lines for the communal bathroom and lines for the mess...

When his dad decides to hire a German prisoner-of-war to help out on their New Brunswick farm, thirteen-year-old Warren Webb is pretty sure the family is doomed. Who invites a Nazi to sleep under their roof? But Martin is not the German Warren expected. After his early attempts to get rid of Martin fail, Warren takes his dead brother Pete’s advice and finds himself learning more from his enemy than he ever expected. Soon Martin, a promising track-and-field athlete before the war, is coachi...