Social Studies

The Breadwinner

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Copies: 5

Parvana felt the shadow before she saw it, as the man moved between her and the sun. Turning her head, she saw the dark turban that was the uniform of the Taliban. A rifle was slung across his chest as casually as her father's shoulder bag had been slung across hers...

The Talib kept looking down at her. Then he put his hand inside his vest. Keeping his eyes on Parvana, he drew something out of his vest pocket.

Parvana was about to squish her eyes shut and wait to be shot when she saw that the Talib had taken out a letter.

He sat down beside her on the blanket.

Author:

Deborah Ellis

Lexile:

630L

Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat (2003)

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Bread Where does it come from? How is it made?

Come watch a baker turn a homegrown crop of wheat into a homemade loaf to eat. Then see it all happen again at a big farm, a giant mill, and a full-scale commercial bakery.

Grade Level:

Elementary

Length:

00:22

Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat

Colonial Williamsburg

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This web site includes information not only about the village of Colonial Williamsburg, but also American history and what life was like in the colonial and revolutionary times. Interactive games for kids bring history to life!

Zora!

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Copies: 7

Even as a little girl, Zora Neale Hurston was confident, charismatic, and determined to be extraordinary. As a proud young girl who grew up in an all-black community in Eatonville, Florida, she didn't experience the prejudice that many African Americans felt at the time. In fact, she was so self-confident as a child that she thought the moon followed her wherever she went. She arrived in New York at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and quickly gained recognition for her work, making friends such as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke.

Author:

Dennis Brindell Fradin

Lexile:

1110L

Nelson Mandela

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This is the story of a young boy who grew up to become president of South Africa. His lifelong quest was to establish equality for people of all colors.

Author:

Kadir Nelson

Grade Level:

Elementary

Length:

00:10

Coretta Scott

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This extraordinary union of poetic text by Ntozake Shange and monumental artwork by Kadir Nelson captures the movement for civil rights in the United STates and honors its most elegant inspiration,

Author:

Ntozake Shange

Grade Level:

Elementary

Length:

00:07

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March

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Copies: 7

In 1963, the Civil Rights movement was falling apart. After a series of setbacks across the south, the movement was losing direction and momentum. No southern city was more divided than Birmingham, Alabama, home of the infamous Bull Connor.

Author:

Cynthia Levinson

Lexile:

1020L

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March

Becoming Ben Franklin

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Copies: 7

In 1723 Ben Franklin arrived in Philadelphia as a poor and friendless seventeen-year-old who had run away from his family and an apprenticeship in Boston. Sixty-two years later he stepped ashore in nearly the same spot but was greeted by cannons, bells, and a cheering crowd, now a distinguished statesman, renowned author, and world-famous scientist. Freedman's riveting story of how a rebellious apprentice became an American icon comes in an elegantly designed book filled with art and includes a timeline, source notes, bibliography, and index.

Author:

Russell Freedman

Lexile:

1170L

The Skull in the Rock

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Copies: 7

In 2008, Professor Lee Berger--with the help of his curious 9-year-old son--discovered two remarkably well preserved, two-million-year-old fossils of an adult female and young male, known as Australopithecus sediba; a previously unknown species of ape-like creatures that may have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. This discovery of has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history. The fossils reveal what may be one of humankind's oldest ancestors.

Author:

Lee R. Berger & Marc Aronson

Lexile:

1140L

Che Guevara You Win or You Die

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Copies: 7

October 9, 1967. World-renowned revolutionary Che Guevara is dead at the age of thirty-nine. The charismatic Argentinian revolutionary had been leading guerilla fighters in the jungles of Bolivia and was captured by the Bolivian army. Mario TerÃ¡n, a sergeant in the Bolivian army, volunteered to execute the prisoner. He carried out the bloody assignment with nine point-blank shots to Guevara's body. Around the globe, reactions to the assassination were mixed. In Cuba, where Guevara had helped overthrow a brutally repressive dictatorship in 1959, more than a million people mourned openly.

Author:

Stuart A. Kallen

Lexile:

1090L

Social Studies

Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat (2003)

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