Books like the witch of blackbird pond

The Witch of Blackbird Pond is a children's novel by American author Elizabeth George Speare, published in 1958. The story takes place in late-17th century New England. It won the Newbery Medal in 1959.

In April 1687, 16 year-old Katherine Tyler (known throughout the story as Kit Tyler) leaves her home in Barbados after her grandfather dies and a 50-year-old man tries to marry her. She goes to Wethersfield, Connecticut to live with her Aunt Rachel, Uncle Matthew, and her 2 cousins, Judith and Mercy, in their Puritan community.

In Connecticut, there is a brief stop in Saybrook, a small town just downriver from Wethersfield, where four new passengers board the Dolphin, the ship on which Kit is traveling. As the small rowboat returns to the ship, a small girl named Prudence accidentally drops her doll in the water and begs her mother to get it back for her. Her mother, Goodwife Cruff, harshly strikes Prudence and tells her not to be foolish. Impulsively, Kit jumps into the water and retrieves the doll. She nearly freezes in the frigid water because she was used to the pleasantly warm water in Barbados. When she returns to the rowboat, she is met with astonished suspicion, as few people in Connecticut could swim so well. Goodwife Cruff is the most cynical of them all, believing Kit is a witch, saying, "No respectable woman could stay afloat like that." On the slow trip upriver, Kit befriends John Holbrook, another passenger coming to Wethersfield to study with Reverend Gershom Bulkeley. After the Dolphin reaches Wethersfield, Kit admits to the captain of the ship that neither her aunt nor uncle knows she is coming. She says that they would welcome her because she is family.