Sam Meeker is just 16-years-old when the Revolutionary War breaks out.  He leaves his college life at Yale to become a rebel soldier against his family's wish.  The rest of the Meeker family lives in Redding, a Tory town where they run a tavern.  Tim, at just a few years younger than Sam, tells the story of his and his family's struggles with the effects of the war and his undecided opinions on the war.

This book was really interesting. I have read a couple books on the Revolutionary War, but this one really illustrated that the Revolutionary War, just like any war, is not just two sided; the good guys and the bad guys.

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Jackaby is told through the voice of Abigail Rook, a young woman quite literally fresh off the boat from Europe in 1892. Miss Rook is well-educated and completely inspired by her anthropologist father. But in the grand tradition of daughters of the small gentry, Abigail flees her boarding school and the life of silk dresses and fashion that her parents would have her pursue to join a dinosaur dig in the Carpathian Mountains. When that inevitably goes south, she jumps a ship to the New World with just a quick missive to her folks that she’s alive and will write soon.

Flash forward to New Fiddleham, New England, and Abigail Rook must find a job and lodging with very little money to get herself there.

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Number the Stars is a Newbery Medal winning novel written by the American writer, Lois Lowry. It is based in Copenhagen during the Second World War, featuring the ten year old Annemarie Johansen and her Jewish friend Ellen Rosen.

This happens after Denmark falls into Nazi control and Copenhagen is stationed with German troops all over. Like any other day, Annemarie was walking back from school along with her sister Kirsti and friend Ellen and as always, they were racing back home, only to be stopped by two German soldiers and being strongly reprimanded.

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This book is about a nine-year-old boy called Bruno. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates by one of the family's servants. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far away called Out-With, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. He has had to leave his three best friends for life, his beautiful mansion, and his loving grandparents behind. When he gets to his new but horrible house he looks out of his window and sees a tall fence running as far as the eye can see. Behind the fence he can see strange people in striped pyjamas that he thinks could play with him.

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The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel, a little girl who is taken to a new home because her mother can't afford to take care of her. The story is told by Death, who becomes a character you come to respect and even feel sorry for by the end. The narration puts an odd perspective on the story. Much of what Death says is very philosophical, and even beautiful.

The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany, at the start of World War Two. On the journey to her new home, Liesel's younger brother dies and she steals her first book: The Gravedigger's Handbook. When she arrives at her new home, she suddenly has a new mama and papa. Haunted every night by nightmares of her brother's death, Liesel and her Papa set themselves the challenge of reading the book, Liesel's last link to her brother.

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