Historical Fiction for Teens

We’ve updated our list of historical novels for teens. While World War II continues to feed authors’ imaginations, there are also a lot of fantastic stories from other times. Here are a few of our favorites. 

In Kwame Alexander’s sequel to The Door of No Return, called Black Star, young Charley dreams of becoming the first professional female baseball player. Her dreams are directly challenged when she and her friends decide they will cross the river to play in the white part of town. 

In One Step Forward by Marcie Flinchum Atkins, readers follow Matilda Young, a real-life suffragist whose activism led her to become the youngest woman to protest for women’s rights in front of the White House, and the youngest to go to jail for her beliefs. 

Ann Brashares and her brother Ben Brashares wrote Westfallen, the story of three tweens in 2023, and how they connect with three tweens in 1944 in the very same house via an old radio. When the 1944 kids prevent a fire, the 2023 kids lose a friend, and when the 2023 kids tell the 1944 kids about D-Day, they wake up in Nazi America. Can any of them fix this situation? 

In Alena Bruzas’s novel To the Bone, Ellis’s life as an indentured servant in 1609 Jamestown is lonely and difficult, but as winter sets in and the colonists begin dying, her main goal is to survive the horrors committed by her fellow settlers. 

Monica Hesse’s novel The Brightwood Code tells the story of Edda, one of the Hello Girls of World War I, who operated switchboards for the military. After the war, she works a commercial switchboard and is haunted by a mistake she made that may have cost soldiers their lives. When a caller reveals he knows the secret code she used during the war, her guilt and anxiety drive her to find the caller and put her past to rest. 

In Yi Shun Lai’s novel The Suffragist’s Guide to Antarctica, Clara lies about her age and citizenship in order to join a British expedition to the South Pole in 1914, but when their ship is stuck in the ice, her fight for women’s rights must take a back seat to survival. 

Joy McCullough’s 17th century Rome, from her 2018 novel Blood Water Paint, is again the setting for Everything Is Poison. In this novel, Carmela aspires to join the staff of her mother’s apothecary, hoping to prove that they aren’t witches but healers. When her actions force her mother to flee the city to avoid execution, Carmela must assume the title of head apothecarist and save their business. 

Eyes Open by Lyn Miller-Lachmann follows Sónia as she resists the Salazar dictatorship of 1960s Portugal, as well as her patriarchal father and the oppressively strict nuns at her school. After her boyfriend is arrested and her family’s business is shuttered, she must find her voice as a poet if she is to find her freedom. 

Ruta Sepetys explores World War II once again in The Bletchley Riddle, but this time she tells how two puzzle-loving siblings, Lizzie and her older brother Jakob, are brought to Bletchley Park in England to uncover the secrets of the German coding device, the Enigma Machine. Sworn to secrecy for life, they are still puzzled to find someone trailing them and asking probing questions about their behavior. 

 ~ posted by Wally B.

  We’ve updated our list of historical novels for teens. While World War II continues to feed authors’ imaginations, there are also a lot of fantastic stories from other times. Here are a few of our favorites.  In Kwame Alexander’s sequel to The Door of No Return, called Black Star, young Charley dreams of becoming the … Continue reading “Historical Fiction for Teens” 

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