Counting on Grace

Twelve-year-old Grace, daughter of immigrant parents from Canada, is a bouncing, energetic, vivacious rural Vermonter. Grace is torn between her teacher's desire for her to make a better life through education and her mother's desire for her to work in the mills to support her family. Highly intelligent Grace is eager to grow up and go to work, but discovers that, being left handed, she is less capable than the other workers... Read Full Review

Although identified as a children's book, "Counting on Grace" is a book that should reward readers of all ages. The author, with great skill and sensitivity, weaves a fictional account of a young girl who is forced to work in the local cotton mill with historical fact about the documentation of these conditions. especially by the renown photographer of working children, Lewis Hines. With three grandchildren exactly the age... Read Full Review

When a children's author wishes to write a piece of historical fiction, there are a number of ways to do so. They can write about a specific historical moment. The fall of Pompeii, for example, or perhaps a battle during the Civil War. They can also just pick a period in time rather than any one single moment. The most difficult historical fiction, however, is when an author decides to incorporate a real person into their... Read Full Review