Books in My Name Is America series

The brother of an anti-war demonstrator, a young marine is fighting a war no one understands while his sister is fighting on the home front to end the war in Vietnam and bring her brother home.An agonizing dilemma plagues these brother-sister diarists. He is a Marine stationed in Vietnam. She is at home in America, far away from her brother's war zone, fighting for peace. As the marine writes in his journal about his experiences as a soldier, fighting an enemy he can't see, his siter seeks peace. In these gripping installments of DEAR AMERICA and MY NAME IS AMERICA, Ellen Emerson White captures the unique time period when America was at war both in a far-off place, and at home where adults and children alike marched in the streets for peace and freedo. Poignant and comlex, these two characters will give readers glimpse into perhaps the most tumultuous time in modern American history.

Critically acclaimed author Joseph Bruchac's exciting JOURNAL OF JESSE SMOKE is now in paperback with a dynamic repackaging!In 1838 in Tennessee, the Cherokee Nation is on the brink of being changed forever as they face the Removal -- being forcibly moved from their homes and land, in part because of a treaty signed by a group of their own people. Sixteen-year-old Jesse Smoke has been studying at the Mission School, but it has been shut down and turned into a fort for the ever-increasing number of soldiers entering the territory. Now Jesse has returned to his home to live with his widowed mother and two younger sisters. All hope lies on the Cherokee chief, John Ross, who is in Washington, D.C., trying to delay the Removal. Then one night, family members are suddenly awakened, dragged from their homes, and brought at gunpoint to a stockade camp. From there, Jesse and his family are forced to march westward on the horrifying Trail of Tears during the long, cold winter months. It's a difficult journey west, and Jesse's not sure if he and his family can survive the journey.

When his father dies, Finn Reardon must support his family by selling newspapers on the streets of Manhattan, where he finds himself in the middle of the Newsie Strike of 1899.When Finn Reardon's father dies, he decides to support his mother and eight siblings by peddling newspapers on the streets corners of New York City. But when the two biggest newspaper publishers, Hearst and Pulitzer, raise the wholesale price that Finn and his friends pay for the papers they sell, the boys band together and go on strike. Susan Campbell Bartoletti brings humor and wit to this classic David and Goliath struggle between the Newsies and the newspaper publishers.

In another compelling entry from criticially-acclaimed author William Durbin, we meet C.J. Jackson, a young farmer whose family is forced to abandon their farm and seek a new life in California.April 10, 1935The dust has been blowing bad for several years in a row now. And with crop failures coming back to back like they have, hundreds of families have lost their farms. A Monday never passes without Sheriff Jake Allison posting a notice of foreclosure at the Boise City courthouse. Times are so rough, that when they hold an auction to sell a place, the only people that show up are the banks and the insurance companies. Nobody else has a nickel.C.J. Jackson is a young man living through one of the most tragic times in the Dust Bowl of an America fraught with political, economic, and environmental problems. In this intense journal of life in the Oklahoma panhandle, C.J. tells it like it is-and it is bad.