Learn About Immigration - Bring History Alive!

As an elementary school student, it seemed to me that Social Studies consisted of memorizing facts and dates, much of which was soon forgotten. I didn't feel connected to it.

As an adult, I have become a student again, as I have fallen in love with both reading and writing historical fiction. After all, history is about people and their experiences. It's about their courage, ingenuity, risk-taking, and sacrifice, often for something they believed to be a greater good. Without people, those events (or dates and facts) would simply not be.

An immigration book worth a look: A NAME OF HONOR, a research-based middle-grade novel set during the early 20th-Century immigration period, complements both Language Arts and Social Studies curricula. An engaging story, students will study author craft, as well as a family's immigration, representative of what students' ancestors might have experienced.

A NAME OF HONOR has been shared in family and classroom read-alouds, and although it is written at the middle-grade level, its content spans multiple age levels.

As one student put it, upon reading A NAME OF HONOR, "I feel I now know what my grandparents went through when they moved from Russia to America."

A NAME OF HONOR is not only research-based historical fiction, it is based on my family's history. During school visits, I share my research and writing process and show them that they, too, can begin by asking questions. I help them discover the tools (and hopefully the inspiration) to delve into their own family stories, just waiting to be told!