History in Fact and Fiction

8/31/2026

Sandip Wilson

Books on historical topics in fiction and nonfiction provide insight into human experience while they offer readers details on lives, events, and places of the past. The books reviewed here share stories about events that may be new for readers, stories they do not find in textbooks, and offer new perspectives and details on events that might be familiar.

Armaveni. Nadine Takvorian. (2026). Levine Querido.
In 2000, high-school student Nadine wants to understand the story of her Turkish Armenian family. Her Armenian great-grandmother, Armaveni, who married Baron Hagop, the town miller, was safe and built a family during the Turkish pogrom of 1915–1917. Other members of Hagop’s family and their children lived safely with them, but Nadine’s other relatives did not. She deals with racism among her high school peers, but prospects of a summer trip to Armenia and Turkey give her hope to learn more about her family heritage and history. Alternating narratives in this autobiographical graphic novel chronicle Armaveni’s and Nadine’s lives. During the summer trip, she visits ancient Armenia and sees remnants of its centuries-old culture and visits Bolis, now part of Turkey, learning that her family migrated to Istanbul to be safe. As Nadine learns her family’s story, she becomes stronger, challenging her peers’ racism and the fallacies of her history teacher, who served in the Peace Corps in Turkey and argues the genocide never happened. Gr 9 Up

Baseball’s Shining Season: America’s Pastime the Brink of War. Martin W. Sandler and Craig Sandler. (2026). Bloomsbury.
Germany occupied France in 1940 as clouds of war spread across Europe and Asia, but in the US, the baseball season engaged radio and sell-out ballpark audiences. This nonfiction collaboration chronicles the baseball season in the context of the escalation of war in Europe, introducing players (Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Pee Wee Reese, and Phil Rizzuto, among the greatest players of the game) and describing the play-by-play events that lead to memorable games and records, with details of the momentous World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees. The archival photographs, their captions, and inserted sections provide details of the historical and social context of the year. Back matter includes a section of further reading, sources, acknowledgments, and photo credits. Gr 5 Up

Basketball: The Story of the All-American Game. Kadir Nelson. (2026). Little Brown.
With a table of contents structured in the quarters of a game, Kadir Nelson chronicles the history of the game through biographies of notable players. The book features history of the game and ends with a post-game section, advances that include women's basketball, birth of the NBA, and achievements of more recent years, which show its evolution from a gymnasium and playground activity to professional ball. Stunning full-page illustrations rendered in rich oil paint show each athlete in dramatic action. The fast-paced text on the facing page includes significant points about their lives with vocabulary that uses the language of basketball. Double-page spreads depict advances in dress, moves on the court, and the game’s future. Back matter includes an author’s note, timeline, glossary, endnotes, sources, and index. Gr 2 Up

Diamond Fever: A True Crime Story in the Wild West. Steve Sheinkin. (2026). Illus. Jon Chad. Roaring Brook.
In 1870, a year after the transcontinental railroad was completed, cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack showed a pouch of rough diamonds and rubies to George Roberts, an investor who was eager for a new project. This meeting set off two years of a scam that involved two countries, investors, geologists for the federal government, miners, jewelers, shysters, and bankers. The trio spends months getting investors in the project, more months finding the diamond field, and readers learn how Arnold and Slack set up the believable ruse, aided by the advent of train travel that cut the time of continental and ocean travel to England to weeks rather than months. Organized in six parts, Steve Sheinkin puts each event of the unfolding scam of the false gems in the historical context of other events of the period. This nonfiction book includes a table of contents, two-page cast of characters, an epilogue, author’s note, source notes, and bibliography. Gr 6 Up

Eureka. Victoria Chang. (2026). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
In San Francisco of 1884, two years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, in-debt parents of twelve-year old Mei Mei send their daughter two hundred miles north to a better life with her aunt and uncle in the bustling coastal city of Eureka to save her from servitude or a worse fate. When she arrives, she finds Chinese families living in ramshackle houses along muddy streets, set in the low-lying parts of the city. Although she believes she will go to school, her aunt and uncle have found her a job in the kitchen of a family of a lumber baron, Mr. Bobbitt. This novel in verse recounts her story of despair and hope as she finds allies in the cook and servant of the household, Miss Yu and Tom, and learns English from the Bobbitt daughter, at a time of rising tension between the white citizens and the Chinese community that leads to their exclusion. Back matter includes an author’s note with definition of terms, acknowledgments, and author bio. Gr 5–8

The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America. David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels. (2026). Knopf.
This comprehensive nonfiction book is a “mix of narrative nonfiction, interviews, reprinted works from the 1980s and 1990s and a few creative approaches” to chronicle the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States (p. 5). Sections mark periods from the 1970s, when HIV/AIDS killed people but no one knew yet that the virus was the cause, through the 1980s and 1990s, when celebrities’ disclosures about being HIV+ and their deaths finally changed attitudes of political leaders and the public, causing them to take action. Levithan and Duckels explain how HIV affects the human body and provide narratives and poetry about specific individuals, detailing their lives and their work to help sufferers, and source material revealing beliefs that public health is a national concern for everyone. Back matter includes notes on sources, bibliography, suggested reading on the global AIDS crisis, and acknowledgments. Gr 9 Up

The Heiress of Nowhere. Stacey Lee. (2026). Simon & Schuster/Sarah Barley Books.
Set in the Orcas Island north of Seattle in 1918, eighteen-year old Lucy serves Mr. Sanders, a ship-building entrepreneur, and his household on his vast estate, Nowhere, so named for its seclusion. The daughter of Mr. Sanders’ best friend, Henry Wang, mysteriously murdered at the time of her birth, Lucy has lived on the estate all her life. When Mr. Sanders mysteriously dies, she is surprised to inherit the business and the estate, much to the chagrin of his business associates and son. The mystery of who murdered both Mr. Sanders and Henry Wang leads Lucy into discoveries about her mother, competing businesses on the island, racist attitudes that subjugated Indigenous, Chinese, and Hawaiian people who lived and worked among the white settlers, and interracial relationships between the white settlers and Indigenous people. The rumors that she is a witch who can communicate with the orcas, whales the local people call sea wolves, endanger her safety. The back matter includes an author’s note with historical context and information separating fact from fiction, acknowledgments, and a note on the Salish representation. Gr 9 Up

The Lion’s Run. Sara Pennypacker. (2026). Balzer & Bray.
In 1944 eleven-year old orphan Lucas Dubois discounts the rumors of an Allied invasion of France and is weary of being bullied by students at school. Tired of feeling weak, lonely, and inept, he saves a litter of kittens from drowning at the hands of the bullies and hides them in an abandoned barn, where he meets Alice and her horse, Bia. She aims to secretly get Bia out of France to America. Lucas lives in the Abbey, and, as a delivery boy for the grocery store that sells fresh produce, he learns of the Lebensborn, a house where young pregnant women live for months in anticipation of giving birth. Their babies will be future Nazi soldiers adopted by Nazi families. He meets Claire, but befriending her makes him sad that she will lose her child to a Nazi family. As Alice teaches him to ride Bia in the Lion’s Run, a racing track, he concocts a plan to save the baby, finds the strength and courage to overcome his fears, and does what he never thought he would. Back matter includes information distinguishing fact from fiction in the novel. Gr 3–5

Shoes! A Footwear Fashion Frolic. Anna Davies. (2026). Illus. Daisy Wynter. Cicada Books.
Three chapters depict the shoe’s history and design in this whimsical nonfiction book. A chart presents the anatomy of a leather shoe and descriptions of types of shoes through history from different parts of the world, including China, India, and Egypt, with a brief historical context of their use. The chapter “Shoes by the Decade” presents designs, mainly for women in the US and Europe, showing the influence of lifestyle, clothing, and function on shoe design with illustrations of clothes relevant to the period, heavy skirts of the 1800s and the filmy flappers of the 1920s. Spotlight sections of the chapters feature longer descriptions of particular popular shoe brands and styles. The chapter on the history of the sneaker in its many forms, including contemporary styles, predicts its future. The book includes a table of contents and an index. Gr 2 Up

A Time to Hide: Based on a True Story of Survival During the Holocaust. Marion Seidemann Fredman. (2026). Illus. Elisa Kleven, Diana Dove, and Juliana Fredman. The Collective Book Studio.
Julius and Grete, parents of Marion Seidemann, born in Holland in 1945, had lived hidden in an attic in the home of two sisters in Apeldoorn, Holland, for three years, having fled Germany as conditions for Jewish people worsened and they lost their citizenship status. This memoir provides historical context for the lives of Marion’s parents, who lost their business and home when they fled Germany, leaving their own parents who refused to leave and joining remaining family in America. The album-style narrative includes archival photographs, illustrations rendered in paint and pen and ink, and text in blocks that resemble archival paper. The back matter includes an author’s note with additional archival photographs and captions, endnotes, acknowledgments, and an author’s bio. Gr 3 Up

We Are Pan. Andre R. Frattino. (2026). Illus. Yasmine Flores-Montañez and Fabi Marquez. IDW/Top Shelf Productions.
This graphic novel recounts the story of four Cuban young people from families of different backgrounds and Cuban cities, teenagers Wilfredo, Eugenio, Antonia, and Rosa, leaving their families and fleeing to America. Based on the collaborative project Operation Pedro Pan, which ran between 1960 and 1961, involving Cuban educators, the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Florida, and the US government, Frattino provides historical context of the events in Cuba and cultural context of the complex family relationships. During the last days of the Batista regime, bitter controversy in Cuba made clear that not everyone advocated for the change that Castro and his army promised after the revolution, but families were caught in the middle of the upheaval that challenged family life. Alternating chapters depict the children’s lives before, during, and after their relocation to the US and the progression of events of the Revolution. Back matter includes an author’s note and author and illustrator biographies. Gr 5 Up

A Year Without Home. V. T. Bidania. (2026). Nancy Paulsen Books.
In 1975, eleven-year old Gao Sheng is happy in her family’s Laos hilltop home with grandparents, aunts and uncles, their dog, gardens, and fruit trees, but since her father worked for the Laotian government, upon the Americans leaving Vietnam, he is threatened with prison in the new regime. Undertaking a dangerous and uncertain journey as refugees, the entire family flees to Thailand. This novel in verse, based on the author’s experience, depicts their months living in refugee camps. Hopeful about returning to their home, Gao Sheng’s family remains in the camp and watches newer families, who have applied for a sponsor, emigrate, until they, too, finally apply. The back matter includes acknowledgments and an author’s note, with archival photographs, explaining that she was the youngest in the family but is portrayed as the older daughter and narrator. Gr 3–5

Sandip Wilson, past President of the CLR SIG, serves as professor in the School of Education and English Department of Husson University, Bangor, Maine.

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