Scott Dawson

When Lucas decides to skip school because he wants to discuss football with a firefighter friend of his father, he finds himself caught up in the terrorist attacks on New York City.

In 1937, eleven-year-old Hugo Ballard and his family are making a transatlantic journey on the Hindenburg zeppelin, but as the airship gets ready to land, a blast rocks it, sparking a fire that puts Hugo in a desperate race to escape the flames.

A young Jewish boy escapes the ghetto and finds a group of resistance fighters in the forests of Poland, and he must determine if he has what it takes to survive the Nazis and fight back.

When John Hale's parents moved from Chicago to a farm in the Dakota Territory in the late 1880s, he was not happy (too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and that is just the beginning); but after a year, and now eleven, he has settled in and made some friends at school--but when a sunny day in January 1888 turns abruptly into a deadly blizzard he will need all his strength and courage to survive what became known to history as The Children's Blizzard....

When Oscar Starling's mother remarries and they move to Chicago, he ends up in the heart of the big city, trapped in one of the most famous and devastating fires in history.

In Pompeii in AD 79, eleven-year-old slave boy Marcus runs away with his father, who has been sold to become a gladiator, and they escape to Vesuvius, only to return to the city the following morning to warn the inhabitants of the coming eruption.

When the massive metal tank filled with sticky brown molasses that rises up over her crowded North End neighborhood explodes, young Carmen must fight for her life, as a tsunami of molasses rushes through the streets.

On May 18, 1980, eleven-year-old Jessie Marlowe and her best friends, Eddie and Sam, are in a forest near Mount St. Helens when the months of wondering whether the volcano will erupt are finally answered--all three are badly burned, but it is up to Jessie to protect the boys as best she can and hope that somebody comes to rescue them.

It's 1863, and Thomas and his little sister, Birdie, have fled the farm where they were born and raised as slaves. Following the North Star, looking for freedom, they soon cross paths with a Union soldier. Everything changes: Corporal Henry Green brings Thomas and Birdie back to his regiment, and suddenly it feels like they've found a new home. Best of all, they don't have to find their way north alone -- they're marching with the army. But then orders...

Ten-year-old George Calder's life changes forever as he, his little sister, Phoebe, and their Aunt Daisy set out across the ocean on the "Titanic" in 1912.