Central Kansas Library System

Oscar Starling never wanted to come to Chicago. But then Oscar finds himself not just in the heart of the big city but in the middle of a terrible fire! No one knows exactly how it began, but one thing is clear: Chicago is like a giant powder keg about to explode. An army of firemen is trying to help, but this fire is a ferocious beast that wants to devour everything in its path, including Oscar! Will Oscar survive one of the most famous and devastating...

When Abby's first letter arrives at a small school in Afghanistan, Sadeed Bayat is chosen to be her pen pal ... well, kind of. He is the best writer, but he is also a boy, and in his village it is not appropriate for a boy to correspond with a girl. So his younger sister dictates and signs the letter, until Sadeed decides what his sister is telling Abby isn't what he'd like Abby to know. As letters go back and forth between Illinois and Afghanistan,...

A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

Photographs and text, along with personal accounts of actual survivors tell the story of the great fire of 1871 in Chicago.

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe Huckaby, forced to live with the father he never knew, a stepmother, and four half-brothers in Illinois, starts a delivery service to finance his escape back to his mother in Texas, not realizing he is making a better life for himself than he ever had with her.

A boy in Illinois remembers the homefront years of World War II, especially his two heroes--his brother in the Air Force and his father--who fought in the previous war.

On his visit to Chicago, Buster makes a new friend and sends postcards back home.

"This book details the history, culture, geography and government of Illinois."--Provided by publisher.