Book

A guide to the Middle Ages, discussing events, people, and practices around the world from 500 to 1500.

A history of the Crusades, the series of wars fought by knights to defend Christianity in the Holy Land.

The Other Half of History explores an aspect of history that is often overlooked - the history of women.

Colorful illustrations complete with plastic overlays explore the armor, weaponry, and war-horses used by knights during the medieval period, as well as the code of chivalry, the crusades, and other important aspects of life in the Middle Ages."

"Clothes of the Medieval World" looks at how fashions changed as trade, travel, and inventions opened societies to new influences and a greater choice of fabrics and styles. From stately royal robes to simple tunics and leggings, stunning detailed artwork on every page recreates the clothes worn in medieval time.

Nothing can stop John Henry — no boulder, no mountain, and definitely no steam drill. Newbery Honor winner Julius Lester writes with such power that this African-American folk hero becomes as awesome as a natural phenomenon. Jerry Pinkney received a Caldecott Honor for his exuberant, glowing watercolor paintings of the hero. The book, celebrating its tenth year in print, was also a Boston Globe — Horn Book Award winner, a Parents Magazine Best Book, and an ALA Notable Book, among other honors.

Caldecott Medalist Allen Say presents a stunning graphic novel chronicling his journey as an artist during WWII, when he apprenticed under Noro Shinpei, Japan’s premier cartoonist

Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout—the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.—jumpstarting the American civil rights movement.

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 Terán, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's 1793, and there's an invisible killer roaming the streets of Philadelphia. The city's residents are fleeing in fear. This killer has a name—yellow fever—but everything else about it is a mystery. Its cause is unknown, and there is no cure.