Alison Hart: 22 books

The year is 1852. Ten-year-old Emma Wright and her mama have boarded the Sally May for a steamboat journey that will take them up the Mississippi River, but nothing could prepare them for the danger and adventure ahead. When concern over her beloved pony, Licorice Twist, lures Emma below to the main...

An action-packed and heartwarming story of a dog in gold rush-era Alaska. After escaping from his brutal and merciless owner, Murphy is taken in by a young girl named Sally. She and her mother have just arrived in Nome, Alaska, intent on joining the other gold seekers and making a new life. Yet even...

The year is 1864, and a young Kentucky slave dares to pursue his dream of becoming a jockey. Twelve-year-old Gabriel loves to help his father—one of the best horse trainers in Kentucky—care for the thoroughbred racehorses on Master Giles’s farm. But the violence of war disrupts the familiar...

“These last few months have been an incredible journey for you, Gabriel. You’ve been a slave, a son, a jockey, a soldier and a savior. But your journey isn’t over.” Twelve-year-old Gabriel is too young to join his father’s regiment, the fifth U.S. Colored Calvary of the Union Army, as a...

When a fierce blizzard suddenly kicks up on a mild winter day, a young Nebraska girl must find the courage and strength to lead others to safety. It is 1888. Twelve-year-old Anna loves life on the Nebraska prairie where she lives with her parents and four-year-old brother in a simple sod house. She...

Gabriel, a twelve-year-old recently freed slave and talented jockey, is burning up the horse track—and stacking up wins for his former master, Mister Giles. When Mister Giles asks him to ride Aristo, a powerful but unpredictable horse, in the prestigious Saratoga Chase, Gabriel jumps at the chance...

An action-packed and heartwarming story of a dog in the Cherry Mine disaster of 1909. When Thomas’s family needs money, he’s forced to go to work in the coal mines, even though neither of his late parents wanted that for him. His only comfort is his dog Finder, a failed hunting dog who now pulls...

The author grew up in the only mixed-race family in an all-white suburb; with Mostly White, she speaks to mixed-race experiences many have but do not see widely depicted in literature. A strong theme of institutionalized racism ties in to current nationwide discussions of race and class. The...

Thirteen-year-old foster kid Jasmine Schuler is immediately drawn to the scrawny, broken-looking brown gelding huddled in the corner of an auction house stall. Feeling a kinship with the lonely animal, Jas convinces her new foster mom, who rescues and rehabilitates abused horses on her Virginia farm,...

For all lovers of horses and history, it's the next book in the popular Horse Diaries series. Born in California at the start of the Great Depression, Risky Chance is a gray thoroughbred who was born to race. Life at the track and being spoiled by his jockey's young daughter, Marie, is all Chance...

Here is the much-begged-for sequel to Shadow Horse. With a feisty female protagonist, a little romance, a lot of mystery, and a barnful of animals just waiting to be loved, this young adult horse mystery novel will have young girls galloping to the bookstore to grab their copy. When thirteen-year-old...

ABBY IS FREE FROM SLAVERY BUT NOT FROM THE SECRETS OF HER PAST... It's 1865 in the conquered South and things are not as they were before the war. Thirteen-year-old Abby Joyner still lives on the plantation where she was raised but she and her grandparents are free now and continue on for a small...

Curriculum Connections: Dog Chronicles series, historical fiction: based on facts; World War I, Story elements: setting; 1917- England/Belgium, plot and character development, structure; chronological order, point of view; Darling, Mercy Dog of WWI, Conflict: man vs man, man vs nature, man vs fate,...

Vermont, 1850s Bell’s Star is a brown Morgan colt with a white star and two white stockings. He was bred for hard work, yet he longs to run free with his human friend, Katie, on his back. But when Star helps rescue a runaway slave girl, his ideas about freedom may change forever. Here is...