Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky

Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky
Candlewick Press
2010
362 p.

Summary
 In 1952, when Georgie is eleven years old, her family moves to a new Indiana neighborhood where her teenaged neighbor has polio and is in an iron lung.

Ashes by Kathryn Lasky

Ashes by Kathryn Lasky
Viking Juvenile
February 2010
318 pgs.

Summary
In 1932 Berlin, thirteen-year-old Gaby Schramm witnesses the beginning of Hitler's rise to power, as soldiers become ubiquitous, her beloved literature teacher starts wearing a jewelled swastika pin, and the family's dear friend, Albert Einstein, leaves the country while Gaby's parents secretly bury his books and papers in their small yard.