Some of his new teammates--including "loud and obnoxious" home-run slugger Jimmie--are mean to him or to each other. His new coach doesn't tell the players everything to do like his old coach did. And some of the Manatees seem more interested in goofing off than in sportsmanship or working hard. Then Luis is surprisingly named captain of his new team, and he finds himself with a whole new set of problems. How will he get this odd-ball group of teammates to work together?
While on a camping trip, Jesse finds a curious piece of stone with an interesting pattern on it. With research and the help of Professor Peach, she learns that it's a piece of broken pottery with a pattern unique to a certain Native American tribe. After an archaeological dig with the Professor and her friends she finds more pieces of the ancient artifact. Using her art skills, Jesse is able to preserve the clay pot.
Jesse is having problems with her bike, but luckily, there's a local contest to win a bike taking place. To win, Jesse must use math skills to guess how many jelly beans are in a big jar. Find out how Jesse uses math skills to create a secret formula to solve The Secret in the Jelly Bean Jar.
While doing spring cleaning in her room, Jesse comes across a crayon on her window sill that is curiously bent over. She recalls that the crayon was there all winter and not bent at all. Jesse begins to wonder what caused the crayon to bend. Using science skills, Jesse discovers how the Sun is closest to Earth in summer and that's why the crayon melted.
A summer trip to her grandparents' house was going great until Jesse gets caught up in a mystery in the attic. When she encounters a pair of spooky green eyes during a lightning storm, Jesse sets out to use engineering skills to solve the Case of the Clicking Clock.
While playing in her tree house, Jesse is intrigued by a falling sycamore seed that slowly spins to the ground. But when she sees acorns falling fast directly down to the ground, she must solve the riddle while learning about propellers and windmills and using technology to understand aerodynamics.
History is full of fascinating stories of colorful characters, but some of the most interesting parts of history are really odd. You have probably seen scenes of government officials with their powdered white wigs, but in 1700s England and high-society in the American colonies, women created towering hairstyles. Decorations such as ships and flowers were sometimes added to their hairdos, especially if attending a big party. Taking hours to create, women used beef tallow and sugar-water to keep their hairdos in place. This fictional account explains a very real fashion trend and the problems it created for women trying to look stylish!
Explore vending machines and flushing toilets in Ancient Greece. Discover the amazing and amusing marvels this fascinating ancient civilization has given us from democracy to geometry.
Toothless at twenty in Colonial America? Discover some of the most amazing and amusing facts about life in Colonial America and how the pilgrims survived it all.
From castles and knights to the danger of bathroom breaks in the Middle Ages, readers discover amazing and amusing facts about cleaning up–or not–during the Middle Ages.
Learn all about pharaohs and daily life (and death) in Ancient Egypt. Discover 3,000 years of an ancient civilization through amazing and amusing facts about daily life, afterlife, and how the rulers kept it all under control.
Explore daily life in Ancient Rome from the Colosseum to commode and how this powerful empire ruled much of the world for more than 1,000 years.
Scott Schroeder dreams of a day when he and his father can have a home of their own. Following an accident that took his mother’s life eight years before, doctors discovered Scott was suddenly deaf. Blessed with being an accomplished gymnast, and even though he signs and reads lips, Scott’s biggest challenge is convincing others he is just as able in doing all things as those in the hearing world. Picking up on conversations he observes along the way, Scott figures out a big family secret concerning his father and uncle and makes his mind up to play a part in their reconciliation.
Into the Wind is a middle-grade novel about the unlikely friendship between a boy and an elderly woman. Both moving and joyful, this is a poignant story about loss and love, and the surprising and sustaining bonds that can grow between the old and young.
Thirteen-year-old Satoshi Matsumoto spent the last three years living in Atlanta where he was the star of his middle-school baseball team—a slugger with pro potential, according to his coach. Now that his father’s work in the US has come to an end, he’s moved back to his hometown in rural Japan. Living abroad has changed him, and now his old friends in Japan are suspicious of his new foreign ways. Even worse, his childhood foe Shintaro, whose dad has ties to gangsters, is in his homeroom. After he joins his new school’s baseball team, Satoshi has a chance to be a hero until he makes a major-league error.
This magnificent arch rises on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. The nation’s tallest monument is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, honoring Thomas Jefferson’s vision of westward expansion. Mired in controversy in the beginning, this amazing structure is now a national treasure and symbol of the nation’s reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
More than just a random display of U.S. Presidents, this imposing monument honors leaders who led America’s founding, expansion, preservation, and unification. Discover the unusual story of how these faces of history ended up on a mountainside in South Dakota’s Black Hills.
From the British surrender in Yorktown to the Civil War to Woman Suffrage and the fight for Civil Rights, one powerful witness to American history played an important role. Discover the reasons why the old cracked bell in Philadelphia is still one of our nation’s most-loved symbols.
In the 1770s before the United States was a nation, most people lived on farms. But Williamsburg in Virginia Colony was a busy town with wide streets, grand public buildings, bustling shops, and a large Market Square. Home to 2,000 people from wealthy gentry and middle class shopkeepers to poor slaves. Find out how Williamsburg today gives us a fascinating window into America’s past.
Derrick finally feels like he’s getting the hang of Middle School. But when Derrick’s cartoons protesting racism backfire, the Muslim kids turn against him and the paper is in danger of being shut down, along with Derrick’s cartooning career.
Derrick’s goldfish, Finn and Gillian, have gone missing! Things take a turn for the weird when Derrick realizes his two science teachers are also nowhere to be found. What do plankton, plastic, and the fate of oceans have to do with missing persons and fishy pets?
7th grader Derrick’s “Dead Max Comix” are such a hit in the school paper he and Max start their own advice column. Derrick and Doug should have asked for advice before they started a band without inviting Kim and Keisha to join. Will the Battle of the Bands mean the end of Derrick and Kim? Not if Dead Max can help out.
Derrick Hollis is a 7th grader at Zachary Taylor Middle School and an aspiring cartoonist too shy to show his work to anybody. Derrick is devastated when his dog Max dies. But after being cremated, Max returns as a ghost giving Derrick advice. Will Dead Max be good for Derrick?
Abandoned by her white father, thirteen-year-old Red Dove faces another lean winter with her Lakota family on the Great Plains. Willful and proud, she is presented with a stark choice: leave her people to live in the white world, or stay and watch them starve. Red Dove begins a journey to find her place in the world and discovers that her greatest power comes from within herself.
Thirteen-year-old Hannah Higgins is convinced her summer is ruined when she is forced to travel to Africa and work in a remote village in Kenya with her mom and uncle. Never having been to a developing country, she finds the food challenging and the community filthy. She has to live without electricity or running water. Then she is told she must attend school. Just when she thinks nothing could make this trip any worse, she learns people there are dying of hunger and preventable disease. Hannah becomes frustrated and wants to help, but when poverty threatens the lives of people she loves, all she wants to do is go home.
