Jim Murphy

Newbery Honor and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor-recipient Jim Murphy has written numerous stories based on historical events, such as The Boys' War and The Great Fire. In An American Plague, he tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Bizarre medical practices of the time are discussed...

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award (Vermont) This contemporary classic explores the role of boys who fought in the Civil War. No reader’s vision of America’s most brutal and bloody war will be the same after reading this book. “This wrenching look at our nation’s...

On June 3, 1863, nineteen-year-old Confederate lieutenant John Dooley prepared to march on Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Thomas Galway, a seventeen-year-old corporal in the Union army, waited for the battle to begin. Drawing on the written accounts of these young soldiers, Murphy traces the...

The Great Fire of 1871 was one of the most colossal disasters in American history - with damage so profound that few people believed the city could ever rise again....

On March 12, 1888, hurricane-force winds and unrelenting snow began to bring the East Coast...

Jon Scieszka's Guys Read anthology series for tweens turns to nonfiction in its fifth volume, True Stories. The fifth installment in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading features ten stories that are 100% amazing, 100% adventurous, 100% unbelievable—and 100% true. A star-studded group of...

Award-winning author Jim Murphy whisks you back in time to witness the disastrous 1871 Chicago fire. He depicts the tragedy so vividly, you can almost feel the scorching heat and hear the roar of the blaze as it reduces the bustling city to a smoldering wasteland. On a warm Sunday evening, a...

In the summer of 1879, the young writer Robert Louis Stevenson received a telegram from America. Fanny, a dear friend in California, was ill. Stevenson packed his bags and left his home in Scotland. When the steamer reached the east coast of America, his journey had just begun. Stevenson had...

A two-time Newbery Honor Book author, Jim Murphy is among the world’s finest writers of nonfiction for children. In A Savage Thunder he takes listeners back to the American Civil War to tell the terrible yet extraordinary story of the Battle of Antietam. With the entire world watching, two...