Soon the fruit is big, red, and ready to be picked. It's time to make an apple pie! Here is a celebration of apples and how things grow--sure to delight young readers all year long.

    He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

    Meet Viv, who has a new home and a new school by the sea and follow her as she finds her way in a new place and helps bring together a whole community to save the sea turtles of the South Carolina coast.• Explores various important themes like activism, philanthropy, volunteerism, and more• Features gorgeous watercolor illustrations that are colorful and engaging• Includes a "Letter to Young Activists" from the author as well as resources to learn more about sea turtles.• Meilo So is the esteemed illustrator of many books, including Water Sings Blue. Philippe Cousteau is an award-winning television host, producer, author, speaker, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur. Deborah Hopkinson is the author of many award-winning nonfiction books for young readersFans of Manfish and Water Sings Blue will also enjoy the inspiring storyline and stunning illustrations in Follow the Moon Home.• Great family and classroom read-aloud book• Books for kids ages 4-6 • Children's picture books for kindergarten through third grade

    From 1775 to the present day, this fascinating framing device lets readers watch as human and animal populations shift and the landscape transitions from country to city. Methods of transportation, communication and energy use progress rapidly while other things hardly seem to change at all. This engaging, eye-opening window into history is perfect for budding historians and nature enthusiasts alike, and the time-lapse quality of the detail-packed illustrations will draw readers in as they pore over each spread to spot the changes that come with each new era. A fact-filled poster is included to add to the fun.

    But what is there to eat in April? In May? Follow along and eat like a bear throughout the year: fish from a stream, ants from a tree, and delicious huckleberries from a bush. Fill up your belly and prepare for the long winter ahead, when you'll snuggle into your warm den and snore like a bear once again.

    In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

    Explore the functions of levers, wheels, and pulleys, and learn how to lift a lion, pull a panda, and deliver a basket of bananas to a baboon birthday party!

    It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.

    These guys are now nature’s ROCK STARS! If you’re age 5, you’re probably as tall as an Emperor. But why do they throw up so much? March this way, and find out all!National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources.Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

    Now Sophie tells her story in this picture book that celebrates women in science, bugs of all kinds, and the importance of staying true to yourself.Sophia Spencer has loved bugs ever since a butterfly landed on her shoulder--and wouldn't leave--at a butterfly conservancy when she was only two-and-a-half years old. In preschool and kindergarten, Sophia was thrilled to share what she knew about grasshoppers (her very favorite insects), as well as ants and fireflies... but by first grade, not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Some students bullied her, and Sophia stopped talking about bugs altogether. When Sophia's mother wrote to an entomological society looking for a bug scientist to be a pen pal for her daughter, she and Sophie were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response--letters, photos, and videos came flooding in. Using the hashtag BugsR4Girls, scientists tweeted hundreds of times to tell Sophia to keep up her interest in bugs--and it worked! Sophia has since appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and NPR, and she continues to share her love of bugs with others.

    By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest-enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

    From the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone comes an amazing account of scientific and spiritual passion for the tallest trees in the world, the startling biosystem of Rthe canopy, S and those who are committed to the preservation of this astonishing and largely unknown world.

    And if an octopus loses an arm, it will eventually grow another one. Amazing! Read and find out about the many other ways an octopus is amazing. This nonfiction picture book is an excellent choice to share during homeschooling, in particular for children ages 4 to 6. It’s a fun way to learn to read and as a supplement for activity books for children."[Here is] a charming introduction to the truly amazing octopus [from its intelligence to its ability to change colors to the camouflaging black ink it squirts to escape predators]. Lauber's chatty, fact-filled text makes the book a good read-aloud, and Keller's amusing and colorful drawings enhance it—a perfect match of text and illustration." —SLJ.This is a Level 2 Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science title, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades and supports the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

    Dual-layered text introduces the life cycle of the horseshoe crab, with a focus on the annual mass-spawning event at Delaware Bay.

    Caterpillars and Butterflies is part of an exciting series of books for children who are beginning to read on their own. The easy-to-read text has been specially written with the help of a reading expert.