Prisoner B-3087


Alan Gratz - 2013
    At any cost.10 concentration camps.10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly.It's something no one could imagine surviving.But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face.As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087.He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later.Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will -- and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?Based on an astonishing true story.

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917


Sally M. Walker - 2011
    One ship was loaded top to bottom with munitions and one held relief supplies, both intended for wartorn Europe. The resulting blast flattened two towns, Halifax and Dartmouth, and killed nearly 2,000 people. As if that wasn't devastating enough, a blizzard hit the next day, dumping more than a foot of snow on the area and paralyzing much-needed relief efforts.Fascinating, edge-of-your-seat storytelling based on original source material conveys this harrowing account of tragedy and recovery. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.

The Blue Whale


Jenni Desmond - 2015
    Here, readers are given the actual size of an eye right on the page, and we are informed how understand this whale's body size in relation to trucks, cars, milk bottles, and hippos! With an accurate and engaging text, fully vetted by a blue whale expert, and lyrically lovely illustrations, The Blue Whale is a book that invites children in and holds their attention. Its tempo is like a pleasing melody, which means that the information never becomes too weighty or exhausting―a key thing when it comes to young readers and their enjoyment of a book!

How to Be an Elephant


Katherine Roy - 2017
    If it's a challenge for these 7,000-pound giants, what's it like for their newborn babies?An infant elephant has precious little time to learn the incredible array of skills that are necessary to keep up, from projecting her voice across a 10-octave range to using the 100,000 muscles in her trunk to stay hydrated. But this giant-to-be has the perfect classroom--a family herd made up of her mother, sisters, cousins, and aunts. With their help and protection, she'll learn how to survive, how to thrive, and how to be an elephant. Award-winning author-illustrator Katherine Roy's How to Be an Elephant delves into the intricate family dynamics at play in a typical African herd. Drawing upon the latest scientific research and Roy's own expedition to Kenya, and brimming with lush watercolor illustrations and detailed diagrams, this book vividly portrays the life and development of an elephant from an uncertain newborn into a majestic adult. As informative as it is beautiful, Roy's unique portrait of an elephant's life will captivate young explorers and animal lovers alike.

Cute as an Axolotl: Discovering the World's Most Adorable Animals


Jess Keating
    Cute is for feathery-gilled axolotls (pronounced: ax-uh-LOT-ulz), shy pygmy hippos, poisonous blue dragons, and armored pangolins. All of these animals are cute, but they've also adapted remarkable ways to survive in their unique environments.

The Animal Book


Steve Jenkins - 2013
    Sections such as “Animal Senses,” “Animal Extremes,” and “The Story of Life” burst with fascinating facts and infographics that will have trivia buffs breathlessly asking, “Do you know a termite queen can produce up to 30,000 eggs a day?” Jenkins’s color-rich cut- and torn-paper artwork is as strikingly vivid as ever. Rounding out this bountiful browsers’ almanac of more than three hundred animals is a discussion of the artist’s bookmaking process, an animal index, a glossary, and a bibliography. A bookshelf essential!

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson


Katherine G. Johnson - 2019
    In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.” In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. Katherine Johnson’s story was made famous in the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. Now in Reaching for the Moon she tells her own story for the first time, in a lively autobiography that will inspire young readers everywhere.

Otis and Will Discover the Deep: The Record-Setting Dive of the Bathysphere


Barb Rosenstock - 2018
    A tiny leak could shoot pressurized water straight through the men like bullets! A single spark could cause their oxygen tanks to explode! No one had ever dived lower than a few hundred feet...and come back. But Otis and Will were determined to become the first people to see what the deep ocean looks like.This suspenseful story from acclaimed author Barb Rosenstock with mesmerizing watercolors by award-winning artist Katherine Roy will put you right in the middle of the spine-tingling, record-setting journey down, down into the deep.

Radioactive!: How Irène Curie and Lise Meitner Revolutionized Science and Changed the World


Winifred Conkling - 2016
    In 1934, Irène Curie, working with her husband and fellow scientist, Frederic Joliot, made a discovery that would change the world: artificial radioactivity. This breakthrough allowed scientists to modify elements and create new ones by altering the structure of atoms. Curie shared a Nobel Prize with her husband for their work. But when she was nominated to the French Academy of Sciences, the academy denied her admission and voted to disqualify all women from membership. Four years later, Curie’s breakthrough led physicist Lise Meitner to a brilliant leap of understanding that unlocked the secret of nuclear fission. Meitner’s unique insight was critical to the revolution in science that led to nuclear energy and the race to build the atom bomb, yet her achievement was left unrecognized by the Nobel committee in favor of that of her male colleague.Radioactive! presents the story of two women breaking ground in a male-dominated field, scientists still largely unknown despite their crucial contributions to cutting-edge research, in a nonfiction narrative that reads with the suspense of a thriller. Photographs and sidebars illuminate and clarify the science in the book.

The Secret Project


Jonah Winter - 2017
    They work hard, surrounded by top security and sworn to secrecy, until finally they take their creation far out into the desert to test it, and afterward the world will never be the same.

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women


Catherine Thimmesh - 2000
    Their creations are some of the most enduring (the windshield wiper) and best loved (the chocolate chip cookie). What inspired these women, and just how did they turn their ideas into realities?Features women inventors Ruth Wakefield, Mary Anderson, Stephanie Kwolek, Bette Nesmith Graham, Patsy O. Sherman, Ann Moore, Grace Murray Hopper, Margaret E. Knight, Jeanne Lee Crews, and Valerie L. Thomas, as well as young inventors ten-year-old Becky Schroeder and eleven-year-old Alexia Abernathy. Illustrated in vibrant collage by Caldecott Honor artist Melissa Sweet.

A Seed Is Sleepy


Dianna Hutts Aston - 2007
    Poetic in voice and elegant in design, the book introduces children to a fascinating array of seed and plant facts, making it a guide that is equally at home being read on a parent's lap as in a classroom reading circle.

Plagues: The Microscopic Battlefield


Falynn Koch - 2017
    We delve into the biology and mechanisms of infections, diseases, and immunity, and also the incredible effect that technology and medical science have had on humanity’s ability to contain and treat disease.Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you’re a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty-year-old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!

Hedy Lamarr's Double Life: Hollywood Legend and Brilliant Inventor


Laurie Wallmark - 2019
    But in private, she was something more: a brilliant inventor. And for many years only her closest friends knew her secret. The story of how, during World War Two, Lamarr developed a groundbreaking communications system that still remains essential to the security of today’s technology.

The Frog Scientist


Pamela S. Turner - 2009
    He just liked to collect frogs. Tyrone’s interest in science led him to Harvard University, and though he struggled at first, he found his calling in the research lab of an amphibian scientist.Meanwhile, scientists discovered that all around the globe, frogs were dying. The decline has many causes, including habitat loss and disease. Tyrone discovered that the most commonly used pesticide in the United States, atrazine, may also play a role. Tyrone tested atrazine on frogs in his lab at Berkeley. He found that the chemical caused some of the male frogs to develop into bizarre half-male, half-female frogs. What was going on? That’s what Tyrone wants to find out.