Susan Campbell Bartoletti's books empower the young; her novels, nonfiction, and picture books both inspire and nudge young readers to look into history and see themselves in its reflection. Often taking her native Pennsylvania as a crucible of action and motivation, Bartoletti has made a specialty of labor history, particularly the history and folklore from the warren of coal mines beneath the Pennsylvania coal country landscape. Hers are not the usual tales of the miners themselves, or of the rapacious coal company owners; rather Bartoletti focuses on what she terms the "gaps" in history: hitherto untold stories of the women and children of the coal mining era. With Growing up in Coal Country and Kids on Strike!, she delves into the world of child labor in the anthracite coal industry; in the fictional A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska, she relates the hardships and political...