Book

The author of My Name Is María Isabel offers an inspiring look at her childhood in Cuba in this collection that includes Where the Flame Trees Bloom, Under the Royal Palms, five new stories, and more.

In 1770, the slave Esperança Garcia bravely penned a letter to the governor of Piauí state, in Brazil, describing how she and her children were being mistreated and requesting permission to return to the farm where the rest of her family was living. Before she wrote her letter, Esperança Garcia lived on a cotton farm run by Jesuit priests, where she learned to read and write — a rare opportunity for a woman, especially a slave.

It's 1841, and fourteen-year0old Manjiro and his four friends find themselves stranded on a deserted island after a storm at sea. Beyond the island is the unknown, filled with monsters and demons and barbarians, or so they've been told. They know they cannot return to their home in Japan--the country's borders are closed to foreigners and also to citizens who have strayed.

"Hard as we work for nothing, there must be some way we can change things...There must be something else."

Just after gold fever swept the West--a time when people walked, sailed, or rode horses for months on end to seek their fortune--the question of faster, safer, more reliable transportation between America's East and West Coasts was posed by lawmakers and national leaders. But with 1,800 miles of seemingly impenetrable mountains, searing deserts, and endless plains between the Missouri River and San Francisco, could a transcontinental railroad be built?

Terpsichore and her family are going to be pioneers in Alaska! Times have been tough in Wisconsin during the Great Depression, and she's eager to make a new start. Terpsichore has often dreamed about living like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but the reality of their new home is a shock. The town is still under construction, the mosquitoes are huge, and when a mouse eats her shoelace, causing her to fall on her first day of school, everyone learns the nickname she had hoped to leave behind: Trip.

Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the famous romantic poet, Lord Byron, develops her creativity through science and math. When she meets Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first mechanical computer, Ada understands the machine better than anyone else and writes the world's first computer program in order to demonstrate its capabilities.

On a cold day in November 1944, eighteen-month-old Eileen Saxon was brought into an operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She could barely breathe, and he lips and fingertips had turned a dusky blue, the result of a heart condition known as blue baby syndrome. Most doctors who had seen her expected her to die within hours.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. . . . I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. - Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln grew up with little more than a second-grade education. His father thought school was a waste of time and wanted young Abe to learn carpentry and farming instead. Even so, Lincoln developed a love of reading so great that he would often walk five miles just to borrow a book. In time, his reading would help to shape a sharp mind, a keen sense of humor, and a kind heart.

In this biography for middle-grade readers, Nancy Roe Pimm tells the story of Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. In her trusty Cessna, The Spirit of Columbus—also known as Charlie—she traveled from Columbus, Ohio, on an eastward route that totaled nearly twenty-three thousand miles and took almost a month. Overcoming wind, ice, mechanical problems, and maybe even sabotage, Mock persevered.

There is a ship, a navy ship. It is called the USS New York. It is big like other navy ships, and it sails like other navy ships, but there is something special about the USS New York.

Following the events of September 11, 2001, a steel beam from the World Trade Center towers was given to the United States Navy.

The beam was driven from New York to a foundry in Louisiana.

Metal workers heated the beam to a high, high temperature.

Chippers and grinders, painters and polishers worked on the beam for months.

In this enthralling book, Newbery Medalist Russell Freeman provides a succinct account of perhaps the most puzzling and controversial of America's wars. Describing how a superpower caught up in 1950s cold war politics became increasingly enmeshed in a conflict over 8,000 miles away, he then explains why twenty years later and exit was so difficult. In words and photographs, he chronicles the unfolding events in Vietnam and at home as increasing numbers of young men were sent into the jungles to fight.

On May 22, 2007, three veteran sailors set out on an epic voyage from Florida to France. But the trip of a lifetime soon turns into a nightmare when their forty-seven-foot sailboat disappears along the Gulf Stream in the throes of a calamitous storm. The three weary passengers are left behind and struggle to stay alive afloat a life raft in violent waves eighty feet tall.

"They came from around the world to live the American dream. Instead, they walked into the worst nightmare--the Civil War.

Catherine Burkhart, a 16-year-old immigrant from Germany. Mary Ryan, age 18, from Ireland. Kate Horan, a 25-year-old mother of four small children. They, along with hundreds of other poor girls and women, found work in the arsenals making small-arms cartridges. They toiled up to 72 hours a week making sure that the armies of the North and South never ran out of bullets.

MISSISSIPPI. 1966. On a hot June afternoon, a black man set out to walk across his home state of Mississippi. He walked to confront racial fears, discrimination, and hate. He walked to make a statement. But two days into his journey, James Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside attack. Leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, rushed to take up his cause. What started as one man's mission became the March Against Fear.