Gus never imagined himself a parent at thirteen. But in the war-fraught summer of 1942, while living on his grandparents’ Vermont farm, he adopts a clutch of orphaned duck eggs. Gus can relate to the foundlings, as he is apart from, and yearns for, his own family.

One day Gus finds a young stranger standing over the incubating eggs. Gus doesn’t know what to make of her, with her tattered clothing and strange accent, but soon the girl is helping to care for the newly hatched ducklings, and she and Gus become fast friends. Not everyone shares Gus’s high opinion of Louise, whose poverty-stricken French-Canadian family is shunned by the townspeople. His attempt to help his friend and her family has some embarrassing consequences and he must make retribution if he is to keep Louise’s friendship.

Nancy Price Graff’s fluid narrative and exceptional eye for detail follow Gus during a time of food rationing, Victory gardens, watching for enemy planes—and keeping his ducks from harm.

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A Mark Twain Award nominee book (2003-2004)

In this fluidly written, thought-provoking novel set in 1980, 13-year-old Riley is unhappy about moving with his mother to the small town in Vermont where she grew up. His misery increases when Sam, an old high school friend of his mom’s, begins spending a lot of time with them. Riley is resentful of Sam, especially when he finds out that Sam is a pacifist who refused to fight in the Vietnam War.

Things begin to look up for Riley after his mother gives him a pair of binoculars that belonged to his great-great-great-grand-father, a soldier in the Civil War. He develops an avid interest in the war and Vermont’s role in it, befriends a troubled girl in class, and grudgingly begins to form a relationship with Sam, though he still can’t accept what Sam did. But then events unfold in ways Riley could never have imagined, and he is forced to reexamine his ideas about courage, heroism, and the morality of war.

Between the winter of 1936 and the autumn of 1942, nine government photographers (Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Marion Post, Edwin and Louise Rosskam, Jack Delano, Fritz Henle and Al Freeman) traveled to Vermont on behalf of the U.S. government’s Historical Section. What began as an effort to record for Washington bureaucrats the means whereby one of the nation’s poorer regions coped with the Depression, New Deal economics, and the approach of World War, became, under the passionate and inexhaustible direction of Roy Stryker, the most sweeping U.S. government cultural history project ever undertaken in Vermont.

In Looking Back at Vermont, Nancy Price Graff has painstakingly selected, from the about 1,600 project Vermont negatives housed at the Library of Congress, thirty-two representative images of Vermonters at work and play. This collection peerlessly documents Vermont’s breathtaking beauty and the state’s heartbreaking poverty. Graff’s engaging and well-written accompanying text includes pieces on the work of the Historical Section, Roosevelt’s America, the individual photographers involved in the project, photography as a new visual language in this, the age which saw the launch of Life and Look magazines, and the progress of the already flourishing art of Vermont photography.

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In rhythmic verse, this gentle story describes the beauty of nightfall. A young boy and his mother watch from his bedroom window as the world gradually darkens. He listens for the familiar night noises and hears the singing of the whippoorwill, the "breep" of the cricket, the swelling of the frogs' chorus, the swish of bats flying by, and the hoot of the owl when the sky is finally pitch dark. Now the evening ritual is complete and the child is ready for bed. His mother tucks him in and wishes him "sweet dreams."

The softly colored and deeply shadowed full- and double-page illustrations flow as rhythmically as the text, adding to the quiet mood. The book is perfect for helping children settle down after a busy day. It's a great choice for those who are ready to move beyond Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (HarperCollins, 1947) or Minfong Ho's Hush, a Thai Lullaby (Orchard, 1996).