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Early American fiction recommendations?


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We are doing American History this year. The big boys just finished My Brother Sam is Dead. I chose it because I pre-scanned it and liked it, it was pretty small and seemed to be a good introduction. They are interested in more early American fiction. Do you have any suggestions for anything from early American discovery through the events of the American Revolution? I need to make a decision and make the purchases by Monday.

 

Thank you!

 

-- They are 14 - 12yr old boys with good reading levels. I like the possibility

of matching it up with an Audible recording to read and hear

simultaneously.

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For Canadian exploration and discovery, I like The Broken Blade.

 

We are reading a couple of James Houston's books, too: The Falcon Bow is an Inuit legend. (He also wrote Tika Liktak....)

 

There are several biographies of Pocahontas that are good. I like one by Joseph Bruchac that we've been reading. It has a chapter from the English perspective then a chapter from the Native perspective, etc....

 

We've started out the year reading about seafaring men, both voyagers and pirates, too, with reading Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, listening to a recording of Dark Frigate, etc.

 

I'm not home right now so I can't look at my list of books we'll be covering when we get more into the colonial period in a week or so, sorry....

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My top suggestions for you:

- The King's Fifth (1500s Spanish New World explorers)

- Walk The World's Rim (1500s Spanish New World explorers)

- Johnny Tremain (American Revolution)

- Legend of Sleepy Hollow (set just after American Revolution)

- Rip Van Winkle (set just after American Revolution)

- Carry On Mr. Bowditch (1790s sailing/navigation)

 

 

American Historical Fiction (boy or girl protagonist in parenthesis)

 

New World Explorers (in what is now SW U.S.)

- The King's Fifth (boy)

- Walk The World's Rim (boy)

 

Colonial

- Amos Fortune (boy)

- Indian Captive (girl)

- I Am Regina (girl)

- The Witch of Blackbird Pond (girl)

- Calico Bush (girl)

 

American Revolution

- Johnny Tremain (boy)

 

Post Revolution to Lewis & Clark (1803)

- The Journeyman (either)

- Carry On Mr. Bowditch (boy) -- self-taught, a young man makes a number of sea voyages and advances the science of navigation

- Justin Morgan Had a Horse (either)

- Swift Rivers (boy) -- Lewis & Clarke

- Streams to the River, River to the Sea (girl) -- Lewis & Clarke, with focus on Sacajewea

 

 

 

Classic Early American Literature

 

set in Colonial America

- House of Seven Gables (Hawthorne) -- novel

- The Minister's Black Veil (Hawthorne) -- short story

- Last of the Mohicans (Cooper) -- novel

- Evangeline (Longfellow) -- story-length poem

- Song of Hiawatha (Longfellow) -- story-length poem

 

set just after the American Revolution

- Rip Van Winkle (Irving) - short story

- Legend of Sleep Hollow (Irving) - short story

 

Classic Colonial Biographies

- Narrative of the Life of David Crockett

- Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

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