
Scott O'Dell was an American author celebrated for his historical fiction, especially novels for young readers. He is best known for Island of the Blue Dolphins, a classic that earned the Newbery Medal and has been translated into many languages and adapted for film. Over his career he wrote more than two dozen novels for young people, as well as works of nonfiction and adult fiction, often drawing on the history and landscapes of California and Mexico. His books, including The King’s Fifth, The Black Pearl, and Sing Down the Moon, earned him multiple Newbery Honors and a wide readership. O'Dell received numerous awards for his contribution to children’s literature, among them the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Regina Medal. In 1984, he established the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction to encourage outstanding works in the genre.
"Strange and beautiful, revealing courage, serenity, and greatness of spirit."
The Spanish Slavers were an ever-present threat to the Navaho way of life. One lovely spring day, fourteen-year-old Bright Morning and her friend Running Bird took their sheep to pasture. The sky was clear blue against the red buttes of the Canyon de Schelly, and the fields and orchards of the Navahos promised a rich harvest. Bright Morning was happy as she gazed across the beautiful valley that was the home of her tribe. She tumed when Black Dog barked, and it was then that she saw the Spanish slavers riding straight toward her.
Ramon cannot believe what he has just found in an oyster he's brought up from an underwater cave where the Manta Diablo, the monster devilfish, lurks. Ramon is holding a pearl. Not just any pearl, but the most fabulous gem he or anyone else has ever seen. But neither sixteen-year-old Ramon nor his father foresees the trouble that such a pearl can bring. It will be young Ramon who must stop the monster he has unleashed.
A young Indian girl, caught between the traditional world of her mother and the present world of the mission, is helped by her Aunt Karana, whose story was told in Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Left alone after the deaths of her father and brother, who take opposite sides in the War of Independence, Sarah Bishop flees from the British who seek to arrest her and struggles to shape a new life for herself in the wilderness.
A 1967 Newbery Honor Book: A “stunning” historical novel of a teenager’s journey from Spain to the New World in search of gold (Kirkus Reviews).Mapmaker Esteban de Sandoval is only seventeen years old, but he has experienced much adventure, traveling to the New World to hunt for gold with the Conquistadors. Whatever treasure they find, they were expected to give one-fifth of it to the king. But Esteban is accused of withholding the king’s fifth—and of murder. As he waits for his trial to begin, he recalls the experience of his journey: the men he sailed with, the young Native American girl who guided him—and the ways that it changed him—in this remarkable novel about Spanish colonialism by the author of such classics as Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian, guided and interpreted for explorers Lewis and Clark as they traveled up the Mississippi, but she had adventures long before that one, like the time she was captured by the Minnetarees, and taken away from her family and everything that she knew and loved....
It is spring of 1877 when fourteen-year-old Sound of Running Feet, daughter of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, sees white people panning gold in the little creek that feeds the Wallowa River, and brings word of them to her father."They are the first, but more are on the way," he says. "We are few and they are many. They will devour us."It is Sound of Running Feet who narrates the story of her tribe's fate. Readers will be gripped as she shares with us her respect for her father, her love for handsome Swan Necklace, and her destiny.
Bright Dawn was a teenaged Eskimo girl. Black Star was her part-husky, mostly wolf, pet. Together they were about to begin the famous Iditarod dogsled race through the bitter cold of Alaska. Bright Dawn knew they would win, but she didn't count on the cold, blinding whiteout, the belligerent bull moose, or ice that could crack and splinter at any time. And she soon realized that she was not only depending on Black Star for the race, but for her life....
The planter who buys you will put you to work in his household or in the sugar-cane fields. In the fields, under the hot sun, slaves don't last long, perhaps a year. So show your white teeth, Raisha, smile a lot, and don't say anything unless you're asked.Snatched from her home in Africa, sixteen-year-old Raisha begins her new life on the island of St. John's as a slave on Jost van Prok's plantation. Even as a sheltered house servant, Raisha cannot ignore the terrible suffering of other slaves. But is she willing to risk her life to help a group of runaways?This is a compelling account of the great slave rebellion of 1733, and of one daring young woman's suffering, strength, and ultimate triumph of will.This is Raisha's story.
The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day by award-winning author Scott O'Dell is historical fiction set in Europe during the 1500s. In this Christian fiction book Tom Barton and his uncle Jack are smugglers who are used to breaking the law. With quick wits and secret cargo holds, they have managed to make a comfortable living. And then William Tyndale asks them to carry English Bibles along with their usual cargo. As enemy after enemy rises to oppose Tyndale's Bible translation, Tom is confronted with a choice between what he wants and what he knows to be true
Raised to take the place of her dead brother, Carlota de Zubaran can do anything that Carlos could have done. She races her stallion through the California lowlands, dives into shark-infested waters searching for gold, and fights in the battles that rage between the Mexicans and the Americans. At sixteen, she is fearless--and that pleases her father very much.Yet while Carlota throughly enjoys her freedom, she wants to be more than her father's "son." She wants to be herself, brave and courageous but free to show feelings of tenderness and compassion as well. Her father thinks such feelings are shameful, so Carlota must defy him. That will be the most difficult battle of all.
Serena Lynn, age seventeen, turns down an appointment to serve England's King, James I, at court in order to follow her beloved Anthony Foxcroft across the sea to the newly founded colony of Jamestown. But their ship, loaded with much-needed supplies, founders in a hurricane, wrecking Serena and Anthony in Bermuda. By the time they make their way to Jamestown, the colony is in ruins, the people half-starved. Now Serena must go to the Indian princess Pocahontas to plead for the life of the colony -- and of the man she loves!
Rich in the atmosphere of thirteenth-century Italy, The Road to Damietta offers through Ricca di Montanaro’s eyes a new perspective on the man who became the famous Saint Francis of Assisi, the guileless, joyous man who praised the oneness of nature and sought to bring the world into harmony. “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace,” he said. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.”
As part of a Spanish expedition to the New World, a Jesuit seminarian witnesses the enslavement and exploitation of the Mayas and is seduced by greed and ambition.
For many generations, the men in Alexandra's family have been sponge divers -- first on the Greek island of Kalymnos and now in the Florida village of Tarpon Springs. Diving has always been considered a man's job by Alexandra's family -- dangerous and demanding. But when tragedy strikes, Alexandra decides to become a sponge diver herself despite her family's objections. And she learns that as dangerous as the underwater world can be, there are always more dangers waiting on shore . . .
A new friend at school and her own personal problems lead Kathleen to run away and eventually fall victim to heroin and an unwanted pregnancy
The inheritance of her father's vast fortune and contact with a variety of people with suspicious motives trigger a series of attempts on Lucinda's life in her isolated island home, which is a stronghold of Spain within the boundaries of the United States.Under the guardianship of Senor Villaverde, Lucinda de Cabrillo y Benivides, a fabulously wealthy young woman, struggles to improve the quality of life in Isla del Oro while grappling with her fear that someone is trying to murder her
Lucinda lived like a princess on her father's private island off the coast of California, Isla del Oro. But she was really a prisoner, shut off from the world, never allowed off the island. Then Christopher Dawson, a young archeologist, came to the island and into her life. And Lucinda began to realize the horrifying truth about the island . . . and about her father.
Julian Escobar becomes trapped in the role of Mayan god Kukulcan, confronting pagan "subjects" and priests, and encountering emperor Moctezuma and conquistador Cortes
Includes all Three Books: The Captive The Feathered Serpent The Amethyst Ring What would you do if everyone thought you were a god? Young Julian Escobar is traveling to the New World to spread the gospel to the newly discovered Mayan Empire when a hurricane strikes his ship, scattering its contents to the four winds and leaving Julian as the sole survivor. After struggling ashore, he encounters a young Mayan woman who is shocked at his presence.Soon he learns why. Centuries ago the fair-skinned Mayan god Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent, sailed away with the promise that one day he would return. With his very life at stake, Julian does the unimaginable: he begins to impersonate this returned god.
Jim Lynne is idly playing darts in Liverpool when his brother, Ted, calls him over to a table to ask a question about the ship that he is working on. It seems the ship, enigmatically named the 290, is not the cargo ship that people are saying it is. Whatever its purpose, it is certainly built for speed. But Jim thinks he knows that purpose: it is being built for the Confederate navy.And so launches the story of the intertwined fates of a ship and a boy. The ship would go down in history as one of the most famous vessels of the Civil War. Originally the 290, she would come to be known as the Alabama. Jim, whose father is a slave trader, will have to reconcile his own hatred for slavery with his love for the ship he made and the captain who sails her. Destiny will give him a chance to do just that..."Once again [Scott O'Dell] is able to refract universal themes of liberty and self-awareness through history's prism." -School Library Journal"The author displays his distinctive gifts for distilling significance from historical matter and for dealing with the sea. ... With lively conversation and with increasing tension, from confrontations at sea and aboard Jim's ship, the author crisply tells the story, skillfully integrating historical elements. ... Immediately captures the reader's interest." -Horn Book
Relates the adventures of Julian Escobar, a young Spanish student who impersonates a god of the Maya and travels to view the grandeur of the Incan empire
Take a voyage up the length of the California coast in a cruiser named Arctic Star !Along the way, the author relates the colorful narratives of California's history through the stories of men and women like Cabrillo, Viscaino, Junipero Serra, Kate Sessions, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith and many more. Drawing from journals of other notable visitors like Richard Henry Dana, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Francis Drake, readers are given a window into life in California hundreds of years ago.O'Dell offers readers dramatic incidents seldom featured in text books on California history - like the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the United States Navy that occurred in the treacherous Jaws of the Devil near Point Conception. Readers will delight in the story of Jedediah Strong Smith's wrestling with a grizzly and the wilderness friend who stitched his ear and face back together - with no anesthesia, of course!Pirates have to play a part in a land so rich in coastline - and they do, with buried treasure on a Southern California isle known as Dead Man's Island. The stories of the discoverers, explorers and settlers of California have never been drawn so delightfully as they are here. With his love of his native state, his knowledge of the landscape, sea life, and historical past of this region, O'Dells work continues to stand as an important contribution to the rich literature of the Golden State.
A sixteen-year-old boy sails from nineteenth-century Nantucket to a remote California bay with his two older brothers and finds himself in mysterious circumstances involving the death of one brother and the strange obsession of the other.
by Scott O'Dell
Rating: 4.4 ⭐
Stars, Island, Dolphins
A parole officer relates his efforts to keep the violence and heroics of two young Chicanos under control.
Two burros sold to the slave-driving owners of the silver mine eventually return to save their village from starvation.