Below is a list of resources, adult non-fiction books, and children's and young adult books on topics related to the Industrial Revolution. These resources provide background information, contextualize the topics, and help the history come to life through stories.
- Civics
- Environmental Impacts of Industrialization
- Immigration and Community
- Life in an Industrial City
- Literary and Artistic Responses to Industrialization
- Lowell's Changing Landscape
- Native People of the Merrimack Valley
- Slavery and the Cotton Economy
- Technology, Engineering, and Waterpower
- Transition from Farm Life to Factory Life
- Working in the Mills
Civics
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Reynolds, Peter H. Say Something. 2019. An empowering story about finding your voice, and using it to make the world a better place. Grades 1-3. | Lowell National Historical Park online exhibit. “Women’s Activism in Lowell.” This online exhibition highlights the struggle for women's rights and especially the fight for the right to vote in the city of Lowell. |
| Hopkinson, Deborah. Thanks to Frances Perkins: Fighter for Workers' Rights. 2020. Introduces readers to a fascinating woman who has changed many American lives with labor reforms and Social Security. Grades 1-3. | Lowell National Historical Park online exhibit. “Anti-Slavery in Lowell.” |
Environmental Impacts of Industrialization
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. A picture book describing the land and the river before industrialization. Grades 1-4 and up. | Dobson, Clive. Watersheds. Firefly Books Ltd, New York: 1999. A practical handbook about watersheds, environmental issues and solutions. |
| Montrie, Chad. Making a Living. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Cases studies revealing unexpected connections between the fight for workers’ rights and the rise of the modern environmental movement. | |
| Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A “must-read” work on environmental history and political ecology |
Immigration and Community
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Avi. Beyond the Western Sea. 2 volumes. New York: Orchard Books, 1996. Fictional account of trials and hardships first in Ireland during the famine, then during voyage to America and last in the mills of Lowell. Grades 5-9 and up. | Sutton, Philip. “Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was).” New York Public Library, 2013. There is a myth that persists in the field of genealogy, or more accurately, in family lore, that family names were changed there. They were not. |
| Denenberg, Barry. So Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1997. Fictional diary account of a fourteen year old girl's journey from Ireland in 1847 and of her work in a mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. Grades 4-8. | Ault, Alicia. “Did Ellis Island Officials Really Change the Names of Immigrants?”Smithsonian Magazine, 2016.
History shows inspectors were not the ones changing people's names at Ellis Island. |
| O’Brien, Anne Sibley. I’m New Here. Watertown, MA: Cambridgeside, 2005.Three students are immigrants from Guatemala, Korea, and Somalia and have trouble speaking, writing, and sharing ideas in English in their new American elementary school. Through self-determination and with encouragement from their peers and teachers, the students learn to feel confident and comfortable in their new school without losing a sense of their home country, language, and identity. Grades 2-3. | Weible, Robert, Ed. The Continuing Revolution. Lowell, MA: Lowell Historical Society, 1991. A volume of essays on Lowell including engineering and industry, immigration, labor and management issues. |
| Reicherter, Daryn. The Cambodian Dancer: Sophany's Gift of Hope. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2018. The Cambodian Dancer, a Cambodian book for children, is the true story of a Cambodian refugee — a dancer and teacher — who built a life in the US after fleeing the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge. She then became a counselor to other Cambodian refugees and created a school of dance for children. Grades 2-3. | Forrant, Robert and Christoph Strobel. “Ethnicity in Lowell.” National Park Service, 2011.
This ethnographic study examines the history of immigration and ethnicity in Lowell, the prototype factory town developed in the 1820s and one of the most diverse cities in the United States today. |
| Hess, Ingrid. Mister Magnificent’s Magical Merrimack Adventure. 2016. Four children explore Lowell’s past in Mister Magnificent’s balloon. They learn about native people, farmers, mill workers, labor unrest, and their community in this beautifully illustrated book. Grades 3-4. |
Life in an Industrial City
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Chorlian, Meg, Ed. “The Mill Girls: From Farm to Factory.” Cobblestone Magazine. Peterborough, NH: Cobblestone Publishing Company. Magazine format with historical fiction, mill girl letters, maps and images of factory and city life, highlighting mill life in nineteenth century New England. Grades 3-6. | Dublin, Thomas. The Story of an Industrial City. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1993. This Lowell National Historical Park handbook is the best single source on Lowell history. Excellent color illustrations. |
| Isaacs, Sally Sensell. Life in a New England Mill Town. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2003. Looking mostly at Lowell, Massachusetts, this book presents the history of nineteenth century textile mill towns in New England. Nicely illustrated with photographs and artists’ drawings. Also includes timelines, maps, glossary. Grades 3–6. | Mrozowski, Stephen A. Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell: Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, 1996. Using findings from an archaeological dig at the Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell Massachusetts, the authors create a portrait of nineteenth century domestic life in company-owned boardinghouses. An excellent introduction to the field of historical archaeology. |
Lowell National Historical Park online exhibit. “Women’s Activism in Lowell.” |
Literary and Artistic Responses to Industrialization
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Eisler, Benita. The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women 1840–1845. NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1977. Through letters, stories, essays and sketches the reader hears the voices of young women from Lowell’s textile mills, writing for their own literary magazine. | |
| Larcom, Lucy. A New England Girlhood Outlined from Memory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1889. Reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986. Lucy Larcom’s memoir of her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood in the seaport town of Beverly and the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. | |
| Mind Amongst the Spindles: A Selection from the Lowell Offering. London: Charles Knight & Company, 1844. These selections were wholly composed by nineteenth century “Factory Girls of Lowell” and recently reprinted by Applewood Books in Carlisle, Massachusetts. | |
| Robinson, Harriet H. Loom & Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls. Kailua, HI: Press Pacifica, 1976. Memoir of Harriet Hanson Robinson, who worked in the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts from age ten until she married at twenty-three. |
Lowell's Changing Landscape
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult |
|---|---|
| Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. A picture book describing the changes in the land and river from Native American use, through farming, and into the industrial age. Excellent illustrations. Grades 1-4 and up. | |
| Hess, Ingrid. Mister Magnificent’s Magical Merrimack Adventure. 2016. Four children explore Lowell’s past in Mister Magnificent’s balloon. They learn about native people, farmers, mill workers, labor unrest, and their community in this beautifully illustrated book. |
Native People of the Merrimack Valley
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. A picture book describing the changes in the land and river from Native American use, through farming, and into the industrial age. Excellent illustrations. Grades 1-4 and up. |
Slavery and the Cotton Economy
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Hopkinson, Deborah. Up Before Daybreak, Cotton and People in America. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2006. Traces the history of the cotton industry in America using oral histories to capture of voices of the enslaved people who toiled in the fields, sharecroppers who barely got by and the girls who worked in the New England mills of Lowell. Grades 4–8. | Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History, New York: Vintage Books, 2014. The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. This book illustrates how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the bast wealth and disturbing inequalities that ware with us today. |
| Baptist, Edward. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014. The expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American History. | |
| Lowell National Historical Park online exhibit. “Anti-Slavery in Lowell.” This online exhibit explores the tensions of a city where it was possible to listen to anti-slavery gospels one day and earn a living weaving clot made from the labor of enslaved workers the next. |
Technology, Engineering, and Waterpower
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Brill, Marlene Targ. Margaret Knight, Girl Inventor. Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press, 2001. Picture book about Margaret Knight, a young mill worker in the Amoskeag Mills, Manchester, New Hampshire, who was determined to invent something to make the looms safer. Grades 3–6. | Dublin, Thomas. The Story of an Industrial City. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1993. This Lowell National Historical Park handbook is the best single source on Lowell history. Excellent color illustrations. |
| Macauley, David. Mill. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Excellent discussion of how water power works; extensively illustrated. | Layton, Edwin T. From Rule of Thumb to Scientific Engineering. New York: Research Foundation of State University of New York, 1992. Overview of fundamentals of water power and the story of James B. Francis and the invention of the Francis turbine. |
| Macauley, David. The Way Things Work. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. Excellent pictures and discussion of technology. | Malone, Patrick M. Waterpower in Lowell: Engineering and Industry in Nineteenth –Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Excellent description of how innovative engineering helped make Lowell, Massachusetts, a symbol of American industrial prowess in the 19th century. |
| Weible, Robert, Ed. The Continuing Revolution. Lowell, MA: Lowell Historical Society, 1991. A volume of essays on Lowell including engineering and industry, immigration, labor and management issues. |
Transition from Farm Life to Factory Life
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Chorlian, Meg, Ed. “The Mill Girls: From Farm to Factory.” Cobblestone Magazine. Peterborough, NH: Cobblestone Publishing Company. Magazine format with historical fiction, mill girl letters, maps and images of factory and city life, highlighting mill life in nineteenth century New England. Grades 3-6. | Dublin, Thomas. Farm to Factory: Women’s Letters 1830 - 1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. A series of letters written by and to several Lowell mill girls. Great primary source about life in early Lowell. |
| Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. New York: Lodestar, 1990. Entertaining and accurate historical novel about life in a New England textile mill town. The most popular and widely read young adult novel about Lowell's mills. Grades 5-8. | Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790 - 1840. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Highly readable portrayal of the daily lives of Americans in the first fifty years of the new republic. |
| Meier, Pauline et al. Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. A chronological study, linking the theme of innovation to political, economic, social and cultural developments. | |
| Walker Howe, David. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 – 1845. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. In this critically acclaimed addition to the series, The Oxford History of the United States, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent. |
Working in the Mills
| Elementary / Middle School Resources | High School / Adult Resources |
|---|---|
| Chorlian, Meg, Ed. "The Mill Girls: From Farm to Factory." Cobblestones Magazine. Peterborough, NH: Cobblestone Publishing Company. Magazine format with historical fiction, mill girl letters, maps and images of factory and city life, highlighting mill life in nineteenth century New England. Grades 3-6. | Dublin, Thomas. The Story of an Industrial City. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1993. This Lowell National Historical Park handbook is the best single source on Lowell history. Excellent color illustrations. |
| Hopkinson, Deborah. Up Before Daybreak, Cotton and People in America. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2006. Traces the history of the cotton industry in America using oral histories to capture of voices of the enslaved people who toiled in the fields, sharecroppers who barely got by and the girls who worked in the New England mills of Lowell. Grades 4–8 | Weible, Robert, Ed. The Continuing Revolution. Lowell, MA: Lowell Historical Society, 1991. A volume of essays on Lowell including engineering and industry, immigration, labor and management issues. |
| Macauley, David. Mill. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Excellent discussion of how water power works; extensively illustrated. | Watson, Bruce. Bread and Roses. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Account of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts based on newspaper accounts, magazine reports, and oral histories. |
| McCully, Emily Arnold. The Bobbin Girl. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1996. Picture book describing life of a young mill girl in Lowell. Grades 2-5. | |
| Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. New York: Lodestar, 1990. Entertaining and accurate historical novel about life in a New England textile mill town. The most popular and widely read young adult novel about Lowell's mills. Grades 5-8. | |
| Paterson, Katherine. Bread and Roses, Too. New York: Clarion Books, 2006. A moving story based on the real events in Lawrence, Massachusetts surrounding the infamous 1912 Strike. | |
| Ross, Pat. Hannah’s Fancy Notions. New York: Puffin Books, 1992. Introduces young readers to the concept that history is made up of the lives of real people like themselves. Hannah creates decorative band boxes to be used by the nineteenth century mill workers in Lowell, MA. Grades 2-6. | |
| Winthrop, Elizabeth. Counting on Grace. New York: Random House, Inc., 2006. This is the story behind the famous photograph by reformer Lewis Hine taken while collecting evidence for the Child Labor Board. Grace’s brief acquaintance with Hine and the photos he takes of her changes her sense of herself, her future and her family’s future. Grade 4-8 |