Sparrows in the Scullery — Barbara Brooks Wallace

Colin Trevelyan, newly orphaned heir to his parents' fortune, is kidnapped in the night from his ancestral home and taken to the grim Broggin Home for Boys, where he is underfed, overworked, and destined for a short life in a deadly glass factory. This story "immediately hooks readers, who will gobble up this satisfying fare," says School Library Journal. "Fully realized Victorian melodrama that would make Dickens proud," says The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. A Junior Literary Guild selection and winner of the Mystery Writers of America EDGAR Award.