Deborah Hopkinson

Publishers Weekly calls this utterly charming, deftly crafted mystery about an intrepid young girl's quest to foil a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I "worthy of a standing ovation".

Emilia Bassano is a girl who relishes the music of words. Although she plays the lute and writes poetry, Emilia nurtures a dream: to hear her words come alive on stage. Emilia wants to write soliloquies for heroes and kings and queens

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For years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child's dreams don't come true . . . As a child, Dickens was forced to live on his own and work long hours in a rat-infested blacking factory. Readers will be drawn into the winding streets of London, where they will learn how Dickens got the inspiration for many of his characters. The 200th...

"Get the inside story on the famous fortress in the heart of Moscow that has withstood fires, invaders, and revolutions for almost seven hundred years. Lined by nineteen beautiful towers, the high walls of the Kremlin enclose colorful domed cathedrals, treasure-filled museums, and the Russian capitol. But this Moscow fortress has had its share of dark days. Follow along with author Deborah Hopkinson as she recounts the tales of spying, murder, missing...

In the wake of two devastating world wars, Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady and U.S. delegate to the newly formed United Nations, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Signed on December 10, 1948, the declaration marked the first time that countries agreed on a comprehensive statement of inalienable human rights. This gorgeous and moving adaptation for children, in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of this historic agreement,...

An immigrant girl explains how she learned English by reading about Monarch butterflies, and how, troubled by their decline, she got her classmates and neighbors together to build a butterfly garden.

In 1847 St. Louis, Missouri, when a new law against educating African Americans forces Reverend John to close his school, he finds an ingenious solution to the new state law by moving his school to a steamboat in the Mississippi River. Includes author's note on Reverend John Berry Meachum, a minister, entrepreneur, and educator who fought tirelessly for the rights of African Americans.

A modern-day retelling of Cinderella narrated by the mouse who becomes Cinderella's stage coach.

In Knob Creek, Kentucky, in 1816, seven-year-old Abe Lincoln falls into a creek and is rescued by his best friend, Austin Gollaher.

A young girl flees from the farm where she has been worked as a slave and uses the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the north.

A letter from someone who was once an exasperating second-grader reveals her experiences with a teacher who brought out the best in her.