"Polio is a highly contagious disease. In 1949, there were 42,033 cases reported in the United States. One of those was a twelve-year-old girl in Austin, Minnesota: Peg Schulze. Me."Chapter I of children book author Peg Kehret’s astute memoir is titled The Diagnosis. It started on a Friday in early… Read More

When reading nonfiction, it’s grand to discover something new. Tell me something I don’t know! Or tell me something I do know, but present it in such a way as to make it feel brand new. In 2009, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of a most memorable summer. Here on… Read More

What the author describes as a scrapbook is a handsome and mesmerizing collection of biographical and often humorous anecdotes, "bits and pieces" arranged within a broader subject, starting with "Boyhood Memories," and covering all aspects of Franklin’s life and career, from scientist to statesman. Copiously illustrated with portraits, cartoons, paintings,… Read More

Peter Lawson, the paleontologist who found and dug up Sue, the biggest Tyrannosaurus rex ever, reveals his down-in-the-dirt trade secrets about finding, excavating, preparing, and studying dinosaur fossils. For dinomaniacs, this is a gorgeously laid out hands-on manual, packed with color photos of bones and kids working with them in… Read More

This innovative and enticing biography introduces 20th century painter Wayne Thiebaud, famed for painting ordinary objects like cakes, slices of pie, ice cream cones, rows of shoes, and pinball machines. Color runs riot in this compact little book that reminds you of a box of candy. Each smooth-textured page and… Read More

This handsome and weighty compendium is not the usual linear biography for children, starting with the subject’s birth and moving on inexorably through childhood, career, reasons for fame, and then death. Instead, it is a meaty medley of stories, anecdotes, photographs and black and white reproductions that digs into the… Read More

Meet arachnologist Sam Marshall as he explores the floor of the rainforest of French Guiana in South America, studying the habits and habitat of the Goliath birdeater tarantula, the world’s largest spider. Marshall was an indifferent student at Bard College until he found his passion, researching the habits and behavior… Read More

Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Peter Sís grew up in Prague, Czechoslovakia after World War II, and came to the U.S. in the 1970s. This remarkable autobiographical picture book, told in the third person, is about the making of an artist in a place where creativity was discouraged, free… Read More

We’ve come to expect quality nonfiction from Newbery Medal winner Russell Freedman, but he manages to exceed our expectations with his eloquent and gripping account of the brutal winter George Washington and his bedraggled army spent at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Students who claim history is dull will pay full attention… Read More

When you delve into David Macaulay’s extraordinary and encyclopedic ode to engineering, The New Way Things Work (1998), you are awed by the way he zeroes in on an object and explains, in words and pictures, how it is put together. Macaulay’s full-page pen and ink and watercolor illustrations makes… Read More

As handsome and riveting as any nonfiction book I’ve ever read, this imposing and stately sports book is unforgettable and spectacular. Enough adjectives for you? Until you hold it in your hands, you can’t imagine the impact it will have, starting with the stoic gaze of Negro League superstar Josh… Read More