The writer E. L. Doctorow — who, in “Ragtime” and other novels, pioneered a new way of presenting historical material in fiction — once said in an interview: “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” This kind of novelist deposits the reader in another era to walk in someone else’s shoes. History plus empathy equals artistry.

The impulse to immerse young people in epochs other than their own drives such books as Avi’s Crispin series, about an orphan in 14th-century England; Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Seeds of America” trilogy, about enslaved teenagers during the Revolutionary War; and Margi Preus’s Newbery-winning debut, “Heart of a Samurai” (2010), about a Japanese boy on an American whaling ship in the 1840s.

Preus’s protagonists tend to be young people straddling two cultures. Like Manjiro in “Samurai” and the Norwegian immigrant Astri in “West of the Moon,” they’re bighearted adventurers and seekers of justice. Some are based on real people; others are inhabitants of real experiences, as in “Village of Scoundrels,” about French teenagers who hide Jews during World War II. Always they dive into the whorl of time and give us a fresh perspective.

Preus’s charming eighth novel, THE LITTLEST VOYAGEUR (Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House, 176 pp., $16.99; ages 7 to 10), features a twist: Her protagonist inhabits not only a different time period, but also a different species. Jean Pierre Petit Le Rouge is a red squirrel caught between “fur-bearers” like himself and 18th-century French Canadian voyageurs.