Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, Rosalyn Schanzer
Nonfiction
Back in 1692, life was pretty hard. Kids who lived in Puritan villages started working at the age of four or five – helping out with the farming, cooking, cleaning, sewing. They didn’t have time for fun. Plus the world was dangerous: full of disease and war and famine. But before the Salem Witch Trials, they had no idea how bad things could get.
Deep in the winter in Salem, Massachusetts, two young girls started having strange symptoms: screaming, convulsing, hallucinating. And they claimed that it was because some of the women in the village were witches, and had cursed them. These two girls were soon joined by their friends, ages 9 to 20, all of whom had the same symptoms. They started accusing witches: an old man, a wealthy woman, a woman who was so sick she couldn’t leave her bed. And those accusations, made by a group of girls about your age, led to the deaths of twenty people.
This book includes quotes from the trials of the accused witches, letters written by villagers during the time period, and tons of fascinating details on this real-life tragedy. It’s one of the most terrifying periods in American history: find out how it happened.