Books About the Industrial Revolution

By Melissa J. Oleen Rowan Public Library

                This month’s edition of the children’s magazine Appleseeds focuses on the Industrial Revolution.  The Industrial Revolution in America spanned the 1800s and on into the 1900s.  It was a time of heavy immigration, life altering inventions and history making changes in labor.  This might not seem a very kid friendly subject but Appleseeds proves otherwise.

                Appleseeds provides an excellent overview of the Industrial Revolution that young readers will be able to understand and find interesting.  Young children played an important role in the labor force.  Children worked long hours at hard jobs for little pay.  The wages they received were not for buying apps on their iPads.  It went back to their parents to help the family finances.  Kid length articles (not too long, not too short), comic book style illustrations, sharp period photographs and modern comparisons are packed into this magazine which serves as a great jumping off point for exploring other subjects.  Articles include “Who Did What?”, “Wage and Hours”, “A Mill Girls Story” and “A Day in the Coal Mines”.   Appleseeds is available in the Children’s Department at Headquarters.

                The Children’s Room has additional materials on the rise of industry in the United States.  Two new non-fiction sources are The Rise of Industry: 1870-1900 and World War I and Modern America: 1890-1930.  These titles take this broad topic and break it down into sections that include the rise of big businesses (think Rockefeller and Carnegie), the Transcontinental Railroad, the formation on unions and passing of labor laws.  Both books are from the Core Library, a series of nonfiction books that support the Common Core State Standards for grades 3-6.  The books include glossaries, time lines, charts, diagrams and maps plus a section called “Straight to the Source” which introduces readers to information that comes from primary sources with accompanying questions.

                Good fiction titles pertaining to the topic of industrial revolution include Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, A Shirtwaist Worker.  Angela, an Italian immigrant, leaves school at age 14 to work in a shirtwaist factory at her father’s demand.  Her diary covers the two years she worked in the factory providing insight on what it was like for immigrant families, factory conditions and tenement living.  Author Deborah Hopkinson based the story around a real fire that occurred in 1911 at the Triangle Waist Company.  One of the worst workplace fires in New York City history, over 140 factory workers were killed, including many in their early teen and many by jumping from nine stories up.  The fire resulted in New York City passing a number of fire, safety and building codes.

                Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, has written two books set during the industrial revolution.  Lyddie, an American Library Association notable book, is set in the 1840s.  Lyddie is hired out at ten years old by her family to work in a factory to help pay off their farm debts.  The book follows Lyddie as she finds work in a cloth factory where the conditions are wretched.  After learning the family farm has been sold, she determines to make a better life for herself and attend college.   Bread and Roses, Too follows Rosa, a young girl whose father has passed away and mother supports the local union.   Rosa is sent to Vermont when the strike against the local mill becomes dangerous.  The book is based on a real life event in 1911 when mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts went on an 8 week strike and tensions escalated to the point that militia became involved and striking worker’s children were sent to other cities.

                And I would be remiss if I did not include Sinclair Lewis’s The Jungle for high school teens and adult readers.    The main character, Jurgis Rudkus comes to Chicago form Lithuania filled with optimism that slowly deflates into hopelessness as one set-back after another in the form of corrupt bosses, horrid working conditions, unpleasant living conditions and lack of medical services ruin his chances of finding his vision of the American dream.  Sinclair provides a griping look at the life of immigrant industrial workers and exposes the unbelievable conditions of the U.S. meat-packing industry at the time.  The library has the uncensored original edition of The Jungle.  Through NC Digital, you can check out the audio and eBook editions.