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 …

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 …

Witness is a verse novel of historical fiction written by Karen Hesse in 2001, concentrating on racism in a rural Vermont town in 1924. Voices include those of Leanora Sutter, a 12-year-old African American girl; Esther Hirsh, a 6-year-old girl from New York; Sara Chickering, a quiet spinster farmer; Iris Weaver, a …

The Music of Dolphins, by Karen Hesse, is a children's book that follows the story of Mila, a feral child raised by a pod of dolphins around the Florida Keys and Caribbean. "Mila" is an abbreviated form of the Spanish word milagro, meaning "miracle". The novel uses a narrative structure that parallels Mila's …