We weren't allowed to touch the box. The stories I heard as a little boy faded to a hazy dream, and my drawings from that time make no sense. I cannot decipher them. It was not until I myself had gone far, far away and received the message from my father that I became interested in the red box again . . .In New York, Peter Sis receives a letter from his father. "The Red Box is now yours," it says. The brief note worries him and pulls him back to Prague, where the contents of the red box explain the mystery of his father's long absence during the 1950s.Czechoslovakia was behind the iron curtain; Vladimir Sis, a documentary filmmaker of considerable talent, was drafted into the army and sent to China to teach filmmaking. He left his wife, daughter, and young son, Peter, thinking he would be home for Christmas. Two Christmases would pass before he was heard from again: Vladimir Sis was lost in Tibet. He met with the Dalai Lama; he witnessed China's invasion of Tibet. When he returned to Prague, he dared not talk to his friends about all he had seen and experienced. But over and over again he told Peter about his Tibetan adventures. Weaving their two stories together - that of the father lost in Tibet and that of the small boy in Prague, lost without his father - Sis draws from his father's diary and from his own recollections of his father's incredible tales to reach a spiritual homecoming between father and son. With his sublime pictures, inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art and linking history to memory, Peter Sis gives us an extraordinary book - a work of singular artistry and rare imagination. This title has Common Core connections.Tibet Through the Red Box is a 1999 Caldecott Honor Book and the winner of the 1999 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Special Citation.

    Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on her mother's tombstone and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of seventeen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, another dreamer. She travels to Europe and surrounds herself with more poets and writers, including Lord Byron and John Polidori. On a stormy summer evening, Byron suggests a contest to see who can create the best ghost story. After nine months of daydreaming, 21-year-old Mary Shelley's terrifying tale is published, a novel that goes on to become a very well-known monster story.

    William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution. There, he came up with the idea that would change his family's life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William's windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land. Retold for a younger audience, this exciting memoir shows how, even in a desperate situation, one boy's brilliant idea can light up the world. Complete with photographs, illustrations, and an epilogue that will bring readers up to date on William's story, this is the perfect edition to read and share with the whole family.

    He stunk at gym class, math was too hard for him, the school lunch was horrible, and his class field trip was ruined because he couldn't swim. But what was most awful thing about fifth grade? Kenny Williamson, the class bully, who calls himself the King of the Jungle.When Marc's mother tells him that his Uncle Jake is coming to stay for the whole summer, Marc can't wait. Uncle Jake is a for real, super-cool Navy SEAL. And Uncle Jake has a plan.He's going to turn Marc into a warrior.Becoming a warrior isn't easy. It means a lot of pull ups, sit ups, pushups, squats, swimming, eating right, and studying harder than ever before! Can Marc transform himself into a warrior before school starts in the fall - and finally stand up to the King of the Jungle himself?The Way of the Warrior Kid is a new illustrated chapter book by #1 New York Times-bestselling author and retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink.

    Packed with heartstopping action, devastating drama, fascinating historical details, loads of archival photographs on almost every page, and quotes from primary sources, this gripping story, which follows the TITANIC and its passengers from the ship's celebrated launch at Belfast to her cataclysmic icy end, is sure to thrill and move readers.

    Through his eyes, the pleasures and perils of ranching in the early twentieth century are experienced... auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms all give authentic color to Little Britches. So do wonderfully told adventures, which equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary.Newly republished in a hardcover edition with a 1950s cover, jacket and pictorial endpages. Interior illustrations by Edward Shenton.