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Selected Juvenile Books
Taffy of Torpedo Junction by Nell Wise Wechter, Mary Walker Sparks (Illustrator) Avg. Customer Rating:
Book Description: Here is a thrilling adventure story about life on North Carolina's Outer Banks during World War II. Thirteen-year-old Taffy Wills is an independent and high-spirited girl who lives with her grandfather on Hatteras Island. With her Banks pony, Sailor, and her boxer puppy, Brandy, she roams the island and finds a mystery to solve. What's going on at the old house in Buxton Woods? Why are the people who live in it so unfriendly and secretive? And what is that eerie light just offshore? What Taffy discovers is a ring of Nazi spies, and it is up to her to help the Coast Guard capture them. Partly based on a true story, the book is a tribute to the courage of the people who lived near "Torpedo Junction," a real place just off Cape Hatteras where German U-boats sank more than sixty American ships in just six months in 1942.
Sink or Swim: African-American Lifesavers of the Outer Banks (Carolina Young People) by Carole Boston Weatherford
Book Description: Sink or Swim: African-American Lifesavers of the Outer Banks is the story of their heroism, their struggle, and their triumph.With dozens of historic prints and photographs, this documentary history is the first book about the U.S. Lifesaving Service's only all-black crew. Spanning slavery times, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, Sink or Swim recalls this little-known chapter in American and North Carolinian history. Mixing adventure and social discord, the informative, action-packed narrative will enhance young readers' understanding of coastal conditions and how slavery and other racial barriers affected African Americans' lives. Readers witness violent storms, courageous rescues, tragic losses, and the lifesavers' ultimate victory over prejudice. Their story is both powerful and empowering; in fact, it was said that Alex Haley's next project, had he lived, would have been to tell the Pea Island surfmen's tale.
Shipwreck Season by Donna Hill (Author) Avg. Customer Rating:
Book Description: Sixteen-year-old Daniel is appalled at the prospect of spending eight months at the lifesavers' station. And yet, in the autumn of 1880, Daniel finds himself on the train to Cape Cod, where he will live among the coarse, dull surfmen and take orders from his crude, unsympathetic uncle, Captain Alder, the man in charge. At first Daniel's new life seems as comfortless and unrewarding as he had imagined, but the work is unexpectedly challenging, and to his surprise Daniel finds himself beginning to respect and admire the surfmen who risk their lives to save those lost in shipwrecks off the coast. Breathtaking adventure punctuates this lively, insightful coming-of-age story. An afterword traces the history of U.S. lifesaving from its origins to the present-day Coast Guard.
