BIG List of California History Books

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As I mentioned in my previous posts (here, and here), we are going to be incorporating California History books for all of the kids this year. It was challenging for me to conceive of a way of doing this when I have learners that range for preschool to 7th grade, but then I realized that I could differentiate instruction by finding books appropriate to their reading/comprehension levels! Once I realized that, I had a lot of fun researching and selecting titles for them!

The following is the list I created, with the help of six main resources:

1. Fourth Grade Teacher
2. Social Justice Books 
3. California out of the Box
4. Beautiful Feet’s Around California with Children’s Books Pack: A History of the Golden State
5. Random internet searches (including pinterest & google)
6. My friends!!! I posted about my challenge, and many of my homeschool mom friends showed up by either recommending specific titles, or sending me links to different book lists, like this one for example. There were too many to list, but I want to recognize the contributions my mama friends made <3

I decided that instead of focusing solely on a discrete period of time in California History, we would try to cover alllllll of California’s history. Totally not overly ambitious right? Did I mention I’m an Enneagram 7! Haha!

I’ve kept my personal notes in case they might help you decide. Some of the books are specifically California History, but they contain similar or otherwise relevant themes.

Feel free to add any of your favorites in the comments!

My List:

• In the Land of Milk & Honey (The Great Migration; OK → CA 1948, picture book)
• Bud not Buddy 
• Pop’s Bridge (building GG bridge, picture book)
• Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (Japanese internment)
• Redwoods, Jason Chin (picture book)
• Historical Atlas of California:With Original Maps 
• The Balloon Boy of San Francisco
• The Beloved World of Sonia Sotomayor (Included because I just finished the adult version and LOVED it)
• One Crazy Summer(Oakland BPP 1960s)
• The Pearl (Mexican folk tale, 7th grader?)
• Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice (Biographies for Young Readers)
• I, Juan de Pareja
• The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
• Dragon’s Gate
• Anita of Rancho del Mar (out of print look at thriftbooks.com)
• Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment
• The Ballad of Lucy Whipple
• Al Capone Does My Shirts (Tales from Alcatraz)
• United to Strike (I Am America) (set, I believe it includes the next book as well)
• United to Strike: A Story of the Delano Grape Workers 
• Angel Island Gateway to Gold Mountain
• Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream
• A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America
• Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong
• The Stories of Juana Briones: Alta California Pioneer (out of print, look on thriftbooks)
• Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation (picture book)
• Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II
• Stories of Women in World War II: We Can Do It! (Women’s Stories from History)
• The Dreamer, Muñoz (Pablo Neruda’s childhood!!)
• Echo, Muñoz (fiction, one child in CA)
• Jazz Owls: A Novel About the Zoot Suit Riots by Margarita Engle, art by Rudy Gutierrez (7th grader, maybe 6th grader)
• Amina’s Voice
• The Bay Area through Time, Cunningham (picture book– looking for similar books about LA, San Diego & other metropolitan areas)
• Humphrey the Lost Whale: A True Story (picture book)
• It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel 
• Sylvia & Aki (Japanese Internment & Mexican school desegregation)
• Fred Korematsu Speaks Up
• We Were There at the Driving of the Golden Spike
• Si Se Puede Yes We Can Janitor Strike in L A(K-2; Spanish edition also available)
• Our California(Pam Muñoz Ryan)

Books from California out of the Box List:

• California Out of the Box: An Interdisciplinary History Curriculum (see link above)

• Valley of the Moon: The Diary of Maria Rosalia de Milagros (out of print, check thriftbooks or local library)
• Esperanza Rising (this book is on so many lists)
• By the Great Horn Spoon (this book is on basically every California literature based list)
• The Earth Dragon Awakes
• Island of the Blue Dolphins
• National Audubon Society Field Guide to California (out of print)
• Stories from Where We Live, California Coast (out of print)

Books from Fourth Grade Teacher:

• Zia
• Anita of Rancho Del Mar (out of print, ordered from thriftbooks)
• Patty Reed’s Doll: The Story of the Donner Party (on many lists)
• Anisett Lundberg: American Diaries #3 : 1851  (hard to find)
• Bandit’s Moon (out of print)
• The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps
• Jimmy Spoon and the Pony Express (hard to find)
• Two Bear Cubs: A Miwok Legend From Yosemite (local library had several copies)
• Coyote & the Grasshoppers: A Pomo Legend
• Ishi, the Last of His Tribe
• The Adventures of Phokey The Sea Otter (hard to find, but our library has it! I went back and found many of these books in our local library systems)

Beautiful Feet Books:

• AROUND CALIFORNIA WITH CHILDREN’S BOOKS TEACHER GUIDE (check this link for the full book list. Note, we did not purchase all of the books from the list. All of the following books are available from Beautiful Feet Books. )
• Adopted by Indians a True Story (need to pre-read this one for perspective)
• Song of the Swallows
• Jessie Benton Fremont California Pioneer
• Riders of the Pony Express (Moody)
• John Muir- America’s First Environmentalist
• Coolies
• Locomotive
• With Open Hands: A Story About Biddy Mason (out of print)
• Blue Willow
• The Forest in the Trees

Downloadable version of this list: California History — Historical Fiction Booklist

I am keeping an eye out for additional books from Chicano, Native American, and other immigrant groups’ perspectives. Our family immigrated through Angel Island, so books that tell of those experiences are of particular interest. I would also like to find some additional books about the Filipino experience, especially with regard to activism. This book looks fantastic, Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California– I would love to find a similar book written for children. 

Anyhow, that’s where we’re at with our California History literature based approach. I am looking to some resources Jennifer Mackintosh has been revisiting to help home educators plan reading for the year from their own lists. She has one tool in particular that I am hoping to use! It’s called the scheduling books and pages tool, and it can be found within this post. There are many companies and organizations that sell or freely offer schedules with corresponding booklists, but many of the currently available lists have a quite limited (read Euro Centric) worldview, and I am trying to take what I have learned and move past that narrow perspective. (There are companies that have amazing alternatives, and I plan to look into those further in the future).

I am in the process of pinning each of these books in addition to other relevant resources for California History. Thanks for stopping by!