Rating: Needs Parent Supervision

Reading Level: Mid-Late Elementary

Age appropriate historical fiction about a new Chicago immigrant who ends up befriending a pair of orphans during the great fire. I liked a reference to their parents being in heaven. As you might expect, there was a lot of intensity and horror from the fire and Chicago life at that time.

Possible Concerns:

  • Kids losing parents, becoming orphans, and being controlled by a gang involved in theft.
  • The main character is punched out by the lead kid in the aforementioned gang.
  • Having to move away from your home/hometown when your widowed mom remarries.
  • Fire, burn wounds, sizzling skin, beams crashing, needing to stop, drop, and roll, screaming people, etc.
  • The main character runs away from his mom in a new city to chase after the girl who assisted with robbing him. Not wise.
  • General squalor in Chicago at that time in history.

Despite the scary events, I like that the main character is brave and caring.

See also my review of I Survived the Battle of D-Day