# Black Potatoes

**Author:** Susan Campbell Bartoletti
**Grade range:** Grades 6–10
**First published:** 2014
**Page count:** 280
**ISBN-13:** `9780547530857`
**ISBN-10:** `0547530854`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/black-potatoes
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Sibert Award Winner: This true story of five years of starvation in Ireland is "a fascinating account of a terrible time" ( Kirkus Reviews). In 1845, a disaster struck Ireland. Overnight, a mysterious blight attacked the potato crops, turning the potatoes black and destroying the only real food of nearly six million people. Over the next five years, the blight attacked again and again. These years are known today as the Great Irish Famine, a time when one million people died from starvation and disease and two million more fled their homeland. Black Potatoes is the compelling story of men, women, and children who defied landlords and searched empty fields for scraps of harvested vegetables and edible weeds to eat, who walked several miles each day to hard-labor jobs for meager wages and to

## Where this book is assigned

### Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal

- **recommended** · 6th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2002 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 7th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2002 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 8th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2002 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 9th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2002 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)
- **recommended** · 10th grade — [source: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winners (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 2002 Sibert Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Sibert_Informational_Book_Medal)

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