Beginning with one of many well-chosen quotes-"I know that the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it."-this is a somber and absorbing biography of Annie Sullivan, who any schoolgirl can tell you was Helen Keller’s… Read More

Longest snowmobile journey? Largest monkey? Most valuable guitar? Longest fingernails? (The record holder, Lee Redmond, has fingernails 28 feet, 4.5 inches long, and they’re still growing strong.) Who publishes the best collection of superlatives year after year? Only one name is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, no matter how… Read More

"There are good things about being president and there are bad things about being president." Thus starts the 2001 Caldecott Medal winner, a riotously funny, trivia and anecdote-loaded picture book tribute to the number one job I the U.S., illustrated with grandly humorous but affectionate watercolor caricatures of our presidents… Read More

"Art is a thing that everybody does different. Nobody’s drawing is better than someone else." That’s what the author/illustrator states in her remarkable and instructive first book, though you may soon conclude that her drawings are way better than your own. Mind you, the author was only 8 when this… Read More

Here’s a book that will break your heart. In 2000, when Fumiko Ishioka, Director of the Tokyo Holocaust Center, acquired the suitcase of a Jewish child who was at Auschwitz during World War II, she set out to discover what happened to that child. First, there’s the photograph of the… Read More

While the cover looks like a large picture book fantasy story about dinosaurs, you’ll quickly realize that this is the astonishing true account of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who in 1853 put together the first ever life-sized cement-cast models of dinosaurs, including an iguanadon and a forty-foot long megalosaurus. Until Hawkins… Read More

In 1841, seven-year-old Wes Powell was taunted, beaten, and stoned by classmates angry at his father, Reverend Powell’s, abolitionist sermons. Wes left school and was tutored by a neighbor, a self-taught naturalist who believed in learning through observation and firsthand experience. Unnerved by a wave of anti-abolitionist violence, the Powells… Read More

Arguably the finest of the many books published for children in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight on December 17, 1903, this scrapbook has it all: good looks; a meaty, quote-filled text that reads like a dream; scientific explanations children will inhale and understand; huge… Read More

The first page of this eloquent picture book will stun readers and listeners of all ages. Look at the handsome full-page painting of a somber young African American boy, barefoot, sitting on an upturned wooden barrel, his back against a brick wall. The text on the facing page states, simply,… Read More

What was the game of baseball like when it began, more than a century ago? First off, back then, you could get a runner out by soaking him. What’s that? First, examine the old-timey yellow and red watercolor and pencil-crayon cartoon illustration on the second page, and you’ll see a… Read More

Kids might not read this whole big compendium cover to cover, but as a book to dip into for truly funny and classic jokes, riddles, practical jokes, spotlights on major comedians, and advice on becoming a comedian, it’s an endless source of material. There are more than 1,700 jokes here,… Read More

Look at this book’s comic book cover with tanks blazing and airplanes dropping bombs and explosions everywhere. See that helmeted soldier coming up from the hatch, his fist pumping the air triumphantly? Hold on a minute—that soldier looks like a kid. Hey, it is a kid—it’s Jon Scieszka when he… Read More

Get to know the man behind the legend and the famous ride in a clearly written and handsomely laid out biography amply illustrated with stately brown-toned portraits, paintings, reproductions, maps, and photographs. As an apprentice to his French-born father, a master silversmith, Paul learned the family trade but also served… Read More

“Marveling at Marsupials,” is the first of many lively chapter headings, and that’s just what you will do when you pore over the amiable narrative, fascinating descriptions, astonishing facts, and the plethora of color photos of that third group of mammals, the metatherians. What’s the largest living marsupial? It’s the… Read More