Frank Carlson Library

They were "throw away" kids, living in the streets or in orphanages and foster homes. Then Charles Loring Brace, a young minister working with the poor in New York City, started the Children's Aid Society and devised a plan to give homeless children a chance to find families to call their own. Thus began an extraordinary migration of American children. Between 1854 and 1929, an estimated 200,000 children, mostly from New York and other cities of the...

"Life on the Rush farm in South Dakota is not easy. Even so, over the past four years, Ethan Cooper and his siblings have grown to feel they belong with their adoptive family. Then Chad Rush makes an unexpected announcement. The family is moving again--this time to Mexico! Ethan is scared. What dangers will they face in another country? What will it be like to live on an oil homestead instead of a farm? And what about his dreams of getting an education?...

Nineteen-year-old Frances Mary Kelly, herself an orphan train rider six years before, returns to New York and agrees to escort a group of orphans west to find new homes.

"With his mother dead, his father gone, and his older brothers and sisters unable to help, eight-year-old Ethan Cooper knows it's his responsibility to keep him and his younger siblings together--even if that means going to an orphanage. Ethan, Alice, Simon, and Will settle into the Briarlane Christian Children's Home, where there’s plenty to eat, plenty of work, and plenty of talk about a Father who never leaves. Even so, Ethan fears losing the...

"Nine-year-old Ethan Cooper has managed to keep his family together for a year in a Pennsylvania orphanage. Now he and his siblings are boarding a train headed west. He can't help but worry: Mr. and Mrs. Rush in Nebraska have agreed to adopt all four Cooper children, but what if they change their minds? In the meantime, Ethan and his siblings encounter their first dust storm, explore train cars, and watch friend after friend leave with new parents....

This is a "study of 'placing out,' a program that began in the 1850s and continued until the late 1920s. More than 200,000 urban children and adults were moved under social programs that put children into rural homes whenevertheir parents were deceased or were unable to care for them." (Choice) Index.

Describes the orphan train movement through the eyes of one small child who yearns to know her "real" mother, survives a tortured childhood, when she encountered whippings and sexual abuse, and ultimately, as an adult, comes to terms with her past, her faith, and herself.

"Tells the story of seven orphans who were settled with families in the Midwest by the Children's Aid Society"--

Presents a young reader's version of a story in which Molly, close to aging out of the foster care system, takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past.