Book suggestions needed for teens - historical fiction representing lower classes and poverty

[rose]

My dc are burning out on Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte Mary Yonge and the likes. They read some of Dicken's books and Les Miserables and Hunchback but today they specifically requested more novels that portray poor people and the underclass. I'd prefer classics but modern suggestions will be considered as well. Please just no sex or rape descriptions. I was thinking about War and Peace. Does anyone know if this is youth friendly? I thought of The Grapes of Wrath but I think that I might save that one for a couple of years from now. The final scene with the lady nursing the dying man would give my 14yo boy a heart attack! They'd probably prefer a European setting but I'm happy to add some others to my list. My dc are avid readers and it's hard to keep up with them. It's nice though because I feel like these books teach them so much better than a text book would.

[EKS]

The Jungle--but if you're saving the Grapes of Wrath, you might want to save this one as well.

[tuesdayschild]

These titles mostly met the criteria you listed,  with them being ‘good reads’  as opposed to being all Classics.  My DC appreciated these books at around age 14, they are not listed in gender preference I’ll just toss them all up together.  (We devoured Dickens and Austen here too.)

 

Fire, Bed & Bone ~ Branford

The Girl of the Limberlost ~ Porter

The Endless Steepe ~ Hautzig

Code Talker ~ Joseph Bruchac

Boys Without Names ~ Sheth        

The Land ~ Taylor

Kim ~ Kipling

Night ~ Wiesel (emotive.  auto-biographical)

A Single Shard ~ Park

Silas Marner ~ Elliot

Moonfleet ~ Falkner

Huckleberry Finn ~ Twain

 

The Three Musketeers ~ Dumas (DS said this needed to be added as a good read... even if it doesn't really meet your criteria :-) )

 

(ETA. authors name)

Edited June 19, 2017 by Tuesdays Child

[Guest]

The Jungle--but if you're saving the Grapes of Wrath, you might want to save this one as well.

Agree with The Jungle. A lot of discussion there including how the intended purpose of the book- shining a light on mistreatment of immigrants- was completely overshadowed by the food issues for a very long time.....I've always found that so ironic. But it's a great book.

[jaredluvsjoanie]

The Prince and the Pauper.

Where the Red Fern Grows.

[HomeAgain]

I'll third The Jungle, but I find that an annotated version is a must for teens.

 

For the same time period, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is quite good.  It does touch on the subject of prophylactics and teen sex, but briefly and in context with the story (the main character loses her virginity towards the end of the book but it is not graphic).

[maize]

I read War and Peace when I was 13, I don't remember anything graphic.

 

It was really long, but if they've read Led Mis it's not a huge stretch.

[Farrar]

Hm... Well, they're on the younger end, but these two...

 

Lyddie - girl in the Industrial Revolution

The Gate in the Wall - another about a girl in the Industrial Revolution - really a secret gem of an historical fiction book about that era - about the canal trade in England

 

And then there are a ton of children's historical fiction in the US that covers less than the rich - things like Calpurnia Tate or May Amelia... But I'm thinking that's not what you have in mind.

 

There are a few YA historical fiction books that come to mind...

 

The Hired Girl - turn of the century servant girl

A Northern Light - turn of the century America

 

By this age, if they're reading Austen though, they could do pop historical fiction. Things like Edward Rutherford and Mitchner and Ken Follet if they enjoy history and can do longer books. And I'm sure there are other adult pop fiction authors that would be good and maybe more focused, I'm just not up on the right authors. But that genre stuff is easy to read and goes fast. And certainly Dickens has characters in the lower classes if you want to stick with the classics. And I agree that War and Peace is basically fine. 

[HS Mom in NC]

Ralph Moody's Little Britches series

[HomeAgain]

I thought of another - Christy.  It's about a teacher going to an Appalachian community.

[rose]

Thank you all. I'm appreciating all these suggestions.

[eternalsummer]

I reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as an adult, pre-reading it for my DD12 (I read it as a child, but didn't remember much) and my adult impression was that it was quite an adult book in terms of sexual content; I think there's also some sort of sexual/murderous attack on the main character when she is a teenager.

 

I don't remember anything about sexuality in Angela's Ashes, but I do remember that it was a stunning portrait of poverty.  The one scene in which the boys share an egg as a special occasion food (a single egg!) and the death of the babies from malnutrition, as they drank sugar water instead of milk, etc. really made an impression.

 

 

The Jungle was a depressing read in more than one way.

 

Steinbeck has other books that are illustrative of poverty, give or take, but they might be too adult for teenagers.  

[HomeAgain]

I reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as an adult, pre-reading it for my DD12 (I read it as a child, but didn't remember much) and my adult impression was that it was quite an adult book in terms of sexual content; I think there's also some sort of sexual/murderous attack on the main character when she is a teenager.

 

 

 

I don't remember that.  Here are the list of possible things I remember in the book:

 

A child is scared off of nursing when he is 4 years old.  He wouldn't quit, and so his mother painted up one of her breasts to be a monster and scare him.

 

The next door neighbor is "boy crazy".  She goes out every Friday or Saturday in hopes of finding a catch.

 

There is a bit of swearing, and alcoholism is a theme.

 

The aunt works in a rubber toy factory that is a front for other items produced.  She gives a fancy box to the children to hold and tells them not to open it.  They do, and blow up the "balloons" they find inside and hang them from the window.

 

The aunt is married at age 14 and continues through a string of marriages that may or may not be quite legal. 

 

Francie is about 9 when she is flashed by a creepy man on the stairway and touches his exposed..flesh...by force. Her father pours carbolic acid on the spot where the creep touched her and makes her feel better.

 

Francie is 16 when she meets a G.I. heading off to war.  She falls in love, and debates spending the night with him.  (I just reread it, and she didn't do so, but asks her mother later if she should have)

[Guest]

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze

Sweet Creek Holler by Ruth White

Possibly : The Rent Collector by Camron Wright

 

In nonfiction, consider

Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill

Edited June 20, 2017 by Heigh Ho

[aprilleigh]

Bud, Not Buddy

Esperanza Rising

[Amie]

The Yearling struck a chord with me (but then I have some family history in that region).  It isn't on the same level as Austen and Bronte, but I only recently read it as an adult and was moved by the characters as they dealt with pride, shame, basic survival... It rang authentic to me (in more ways than one).

[EmilyGF]

The Thread that Runs So True by Jesse Stuart - a 16-year-old male teacher goes to run a school in rural Kentucky. This is autobiographical.

 

I read that when I was 12 (because our youth theater put on the play) and it was amazing. I refound my copy after I married and read it again.

 

Emily

 

[HS Mom in NC]

Here's a searchable database for award winning children's (up to 14+ years) books. You can specify region, time period, ethnicity/nationality of the protagonist, reader age, etc. http://www.dawcl.com/introduction.html

[5hskids]

There are no children here

[5hskids]

Monkey island

[5hskids]

The family under the bridge

[Melissa in Australia]

Nory Ryen's song.you cannot get more poverty than the potato famine

[bookbard]

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. I don't remember it being unsuitable for youngsters but pre-read I guess.

 

The Tillerman series by Cynthia Voigt. I always remember the part when the teacher tells them to plan meals for a family, and the girl who actually has had to feed her entire family on a few dollars is marked down for not being nutritious enough. While it's not 'historical' so much, it was written in the 80s which is quite a while ago now! 

[Tanaqui]

Off the top of my head, there's Outrun the Moon. Young girl in Chinatown manages to finagle her way into a fancy whites-only boarding school... right before the San Francisco earthquake.

 

If you want something geared slightly younger, you might try Rory's Promise, which is about the Irish Orphan Abduction (sometimes called the Arizona Orphan Abduction).

[goldenecho]

I know "The Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden" are children's books, but I remember rereading these as a teen and even in college and loving it (actually did a report in college on A Little Princess).  In the first, the main character starts out rich but becomes very poor, and lives with the Scullery maid who used to serve her, and now becomes her closest friend.  In the second, again, the main character is rich, but there are so many good secondary characters who are servants and workers or otherwise not well off, and they play important roles and have fully fleshed out characters.

 

The Help is a good modern book who's main characters are black maids in the 1960s south.  I don't remember sex coming into it much...there is a woman who has a miscarriage.  There are some somewhat graphic descriptions of violence (but they are infrequent).

 

Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn are a couple others.

 

The Pearl by John Steinbeck - it's main characters are both extremely poor, and their poverty is a central part of the book (frankly, I remember hating it as a kid...thought it's message was "don't have hope" , but since you were interested in Steinbeck, this one would work and doesn't have sexual situations that I recall.  It did really highlight the hard choices the poor face.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird...the main character isn't poor but it was during the depression and I think dealt with poverty some (been a while since I read it).

 

The Yearling focuses on a poor family.

 

Holes

 

 

Edited June 26, 2017 by goldenecho

[Rush]

My dc are burning out on Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte Mary Yonge and the likes. They read some of Dicken's books and Les Miserables and Hunchback but today they specifically requested more novels that portray poor people and the underclass. I'd prefer classics but modern suggestions will be considered as well. Please just no sex or rape descriptions. I was thinking about War and Peace. Does anyone know if this is youth friendly? I thought of The Grapes of Wrath but I think that I might save that one for a couple of years from now. The final scene with the lady nursing the dying man would give my 14yo boy a heart attack! They'd probably prefer a European setting but I'm happy to add some others to my list. My dc are avid readers and it's hard to keep up with them. It's nice though because I feel like these books teach them so much better than a text book would.

War and peace we read at school at age of 14. I can also suggest Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. It's a tough book, but it gives a lot of brain food about moral issues. 

[eagleynne]

Off the top of my head I can think of five: Dodger by Terry Pratchett, Oliver Twist and Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner, and Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky. To be honest a lot of Charles Dickens' work deals with poverty in one way or another.

Edited June 26, 2017 by eagleynne

[goldenecho]

War and peace we read at school at age of 14. I can also suggest Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. It's a tough book, but it gives a lot of brain food about moral issues. 

 

Yes, I remember Crime and Punishment as being incredibly hard, but something I was glad I read when it was over (read it my senior year in high school for advanced English).   It's tough, but worth it, and most of the characters, including the main character, deals with poverty in the story.