New Releases by Harriette Gillem Robinet

Her loving father''s major concern is the struggle for better working conditions in factories and mills. Her mother thinks mostly of the terrible injury she has received in a sewing factory. Therefore Dinah Bell must care for herself. But not only herself. She and two other children, Austrian immigrants who do not mind that Dinah is the child of former slaves, not only work twelve-hour days to help support their families with the three dollars a week they each earn, but they do even more. All five families that depend on them for food live together in one rat-and-roach infested room in a Chicago tenement. The children steal, though they hate being thieves. Other concerns vanish, however, when in the spring of 1886, Dinah''s father is taken prisoner by the dreaded Pinkertons -- detectives who help factory owners get rid of unions and their organizers. Now, Dinah must find where her father is being held and free him. On May first there is a march of eighty thousand workers, demonstrating for an eight-hour day. The march is why Mr. Noah Bell has been taken prisoner, and the march and its aftermath, the Haymarket Riot, put Dinah in constant danger. Yet she is determined to succeed. Her father must be freed. Once again Harriette Gillem Robinet portrays likeable children, with their needs and struggles, against a background of real events in American history. The result is an exciting story that reveals important truths about the American past.

Twelve-year old Alfa Merryfield, his older sister, and their great-grandmother struggle for rent money, food, and their dignity as they participate in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in the summer of 1956.

Twelve-year-old Afro-American twins attempt to escape in the face of pirates, an American army, and the British forces during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

In the spring of 1865 some former slaves were given titles to abandoned land, but in the fall it given away to white men. This is the story of how those former slaves learn that freedom is feeling free, and feeling the power of being somebody.

In Depression-era Mississippi, 12-year-old Shortnin'' Bread Jackson discovers his father may be lynched for a crime he didn''t commit and decides that the only way to avoid this racially explosive dilemma is to move his family north to a new life in Chicago. Robinet blends arresting historical fiction with accessible situations to create an eye-opening look at life during this tumultuous period.

In 1814 Virginia, a slave in President Madison''s White House, experiences the burning of Washington by the invading British army.

Because the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the border states, Moses, a Maryland slave boy of about 14, ran away. Tricked into being part of a scheme to send freed slaves to Haiti, Moses was among more than 400 slaves who endured hunger and disease before eventually being rescued. Based on a true incident.

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