More than twelve million immigrants, many of them children, passed through Ellis Island’s gates between 1892 and 1954. Children also came through the “Guardian of the Western Gate,” the detention center on Angel Island in California that was designed to keep Chinese immigrants out of the United States. Based on the oral histories of fifty children who came to the United States before 1950, this book chronicles their American odyssey against the backdrop of World Wars I and II, the rise and fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, and the hardships of the Great Depression. Ranging in age from four to sixteen years old, the children hailed from Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe; the Middle East; and China.

Across ethnic lines, the child immigrants’ life stories tell a remarkable tale of human resilience. The sources of family and community support that they relied on, their educational aims and accomplishments, their hard work, and their optimism about the future are just as crucial today for the new immigrants of the twenty-first century. These personal narratives offer unique perspectives on the psychological experience of being an immigrant child and its impact on later development and well-being. They chronicle the joys and sorrows, the aspirations and achievements, and the challenges that these small strangers faced while becoming grown citizens....

The voices of the children and teenagers who witnessed the colonies’ transformation to an independent nation have seldom been heard. This historical account of the American Revolution tells the story of the “forgotten” youngsters who engaged in the boycott of British goods and the battles that led up to the Declaration of Independence. It recounts their courageous exploits in eight years of warfare on land and sea and amid changing social forces that shaped and transformed their postwar lives. While the Revolution disrupted and risked their world, it also gave them an unprecedented degree of autonomy and sense of responsibility.

Emmy Werner researched eyewitness accounts—diaries, journals, letters, and memoirs—of a hundred boys and girls between the ages of five and sixteen. Her account reflects reports from black as well as white boy soldiers, from teenagers imprisoned on land and aboard ships, from slave children and youngsters held hostage by Indians, and from children of loyalists and pacifists who opposed the war with Britain for political or religious reasons. She also weaves in the viewpoints of Hessian teenagers who fought for the British.

In Pursuit of Liberty sets the experiences of the children and teenagers who lived and wrote in that time in a historical context. It follows the chronology of the American Revolution across two decades from 1770, when the boycott of British goods throughout the American colonies gained momentum, to 1789, when George Washington was sworn in as the first president of a new and independent nation. While focusing on the Revolution’s major milestones, Werner highlights the contribution of young people to its progress and ultimate success.
...