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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.

Learn about how our state borders were created and what is behind their definitions. This historical novel is an engaging and informative look at the geography of the United States of America.

Find the companion DVD here: How the States Got Their Shapes DVD

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.

Thomas Jefferson is perhaps best known for writing the Declaration of Independence. But there's so much more to discover.

In 1964, Mississippi civil rights groups banded together to fight Jim Crow laws in a state where only 6.4 percent of eligible black voters were registered. Testing a bold new strategy, they recruited students from across the United States. That summer these young volunteers defied segregation by living with local black hosts, opening Freedom Schools to educate disenfranchised adults and their children, and canvassing door-to-door to register voters.

Cotton fields, dusty roads, and the hot Texas sun. One little girl's world looked the same as it always did when she went to sleep. But she wakes to find that everything is all different now.

Coretta Scott King Award winners Angela Johnson and E.B. Lewis tell the story of the first Juneteenth, the day freedom finally came to the last slaves in the South.

Early in the twentieth century, most Asian immigrants bound for America disembarked at a rocky island in San Francisco Bay. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, they were scrutinized, physically examined, interrogated, and confined behind barbed wire in crowded dormitories. Detainees often waited weeks or months to be processed. Those who passed inspection were allowed to enter the country known to many Chinese as Gold Mountain. Others, less fortunate, were sent back home or even died in detention.

"This woman's place is in the house—The House of Representatives!"

That was the slogan of Bella Abzug's successful 1970 election campaign. But from the first Congress, in 1789, until the 65th Congress, in 1917, women served in neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate. It wasn't until a suffragist from Montana named Jeannette Rankin won her state's congressional election that women first came to the House. "I may be the first woman member of Congress," she declared, "but I won't be the last." She wasn't, but it's been slow going.

When Michael's aunt passes away, she leaves behind a letter entitled "Who I am, what I've done, and who you are."

It reveals a story that will change everything. It starts with Michael's grandfather Leroy, a black officer in World War I who charged into a battle zone not once, but three times, to save wounded men. His fellow soldiers insisted he deserved special commendations for his bravery, but because of their racial barriers, he would go unacknowledged. Now it's up to Michael to change that.

As the First World War rages on, Alfie Summerfield has given up hope of seeing his father again. Though his mother maintains that father is away on a secret mission, Alfie knows he must be dead. But when Alfie learns by chance that his father is in a hospital close by—a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock, whatever that might be—he resolves to rescue his father from this strange unnerving place.

Imagine being fifteen years old, facing the bloodiest battle ever to take place on U.S. soil: the Battle of Gettysburg. In July 1863, this is exactly what happened to Tillie Pierce, a normal teenager who became an unlikely heroine of the Civil War (1861-1865). Tillie and other women and girls like her found themselves trapped during this critical three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. Without training, but with enormous courage and compassion, Tillie and other Gettysburg citizens helped save the lives of countless wounded Union and Confederate soldiers.

On a sunny day in Dallas, Texas, at the end of a campaign trip, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is assassinated by an angry, lonely drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes briefly, but is hunted down, captured, and then shot dead while in police custody.

n the 1880s, science witnessed a major shift: Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. People dug up the first dinosaur fossils. And the field of paleontology--the study of ancient plants and animals--emerged.

Take a tour of a medieval castle.

Every part of the castle has a function. Walls keep the enemy out. Towers protect the lord and the soldiers. From the moat and portcullis to the great hall and dungeon, see how a castle works as an enemy army tries to storm the walls.

When a ship full of gold arrives in Seattle, thousands of men rush to get to the Klondike goldfields-fast. But the journey is risky. Prospectors must haul a year's worth of supplies over steep mountain passes and navigate five hundred miles of treacherous lakes and rivers to reach Dawson City, in Canada. Will Stanley Pearce and Marshall Bond, two young prospectors, survive the dangerous journey? And will they strike gold and find their fortunes?