Girl's Lives Vol. 2

Here are three stories of young girls who overcome obstacles and difficulties in their lives. These girls grow up and become women with character.

Horvath, Polly. The canning season. 2003. National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, 2003.

Ratchet and Harper are two young teenage girls who are not related by blood but are family because of their experiences living with Great Aunt Tilly and Great Aunt Penpen. They are Ratchet’s 91-year old great aunts that she is living with for the summer while her mother has more important things to do. Harper comes to the remote Maine house under similar circumstances. While living with the eccentric aunts, they hear outlandish stories, work together and become a family.


Larson, Kirby. Hattie big sky. 2006. Newbery Honor Book, 2007.

Hattie, come to the big skies of Montana in 1918, as a 16-year-old orphan who hasn’t had a home or family in over ten years. She has had love and kindness in a succession of relatives’ homes but more often than not she is a burden and is passed along to the next family in line to care for the orphan. When an uncle dies and leaves her his Montana homestead, she heads to Montana to make a home. Unfortunately, she has to improve the land within a year and times are tough and she has no family to help her or advise her. But, she is not alone, she makes wonderful friends and learns the value of her hard work and sacrifice in trying to make a home for herself in the big skies.

Peck, Richard. The river between us. 2003. Scott O’Dell Award, 2004.

It is the Mississippi River that lies between the North and the South in 1861. For 15-year-old Tilly Pruitt it is the river that brings two young ladies that will forever change her life and that of her family. Delphine, light skinned, and Calinda, dark skinned, are mysterious and speculation abounds about their relationship – are they owner and slave? Tilly’s twin brother Noah is also fascinated with the women but with the war raging and Tilly and Noah’s 16th birthday approaching, Noah runs away to join the Union Army. Noah’s distraught mother is sure he will never return home so she sends Tilly and Delphine to bring him home. This trip and its aftermath changes the Pruitt family forever. Find out how by reading The river between us.