Gunpowder Girls: The True Stories of Three Civil War Tragedies

A Junior Library Guild Selection.

With thousands of men off fighting in the Civil War, the government hired women and girls—some as young as ten—to make millions of rounds of ammunition. Poor immigrant girls and widows paid the price for carelessness at three major arsenals. Many of these workers were killed, blown up and burned beyond recognition.

As Steve Sheinkin did with The Port Chicago 50, Tanya Anderson in Gunpowder Girls tells an amazing war story that finally gives its subjects their due. Hidden history comes alive through primary-source research and page-turning narrative.

Gunpowder Girls is a story of child labor and immigrant hopes and the cruel, endless demands of an all-consuming war.

Tanya Anderson is an award-winning author and editor of books for young readers. She has worked for more than twenty years in various editorial functions for Pages Publishing Group, Guideposts for Teens, SRA/McGraw-Hill, Darby Creek Publishing, and School Street Media, her own business.

Anderson is the author of more than thirty books published in children’s and educational book markets. Her book, Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg, is also a narrative nonfiction book for young readers. It was a Junior Library Guild Selection and won the 2014 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Teen Nonfiction.

Anderson lives in Springfield, Ohio, most of the year, but retreats to Palm Harbor,

Florida, when it gets too cold. Her website is tanyaandersonbooks.com. She has also created a website to share more information, at gunpowdergirlsbook.com.