Karen Hesse

Phoenix Rising is a 1994 book by Karen Hesse. It is a realistic fiction book about a 13-year-old girl named Nyle and her grandmother, and how their lives are disrupted by a nuclear accident. Everyone that lives anywhere near the accident suddenly has to wear masks, test everywhere for high levels of radiation, and …

This gripping story, written in sparse first-person, free-verse poems, is the compelling tale of Billie Jo's struggle to survive during the dust bowl years of the Depression. With stoic courage, she learns to cope with the loss of her mother and her grieving father's slow deterioration. There is hope at the end when …

Letters From Rifka is a children's historical novel by Karen Hesse, published by Holt in 1992. It features a Jewish family's emigration from Russia in 1919, to Belgium and ultimately to the U.S., from the perspective of daughter Rifka, based on the personal account by Hesse's great-aunt Lucille Avrutin. Hesse and …