Stunning photographs and evocative text take readers to far-off Madagascar. There, primatologist Alison Jolly dwells and works among lemurs. These fascinating primates live only on the island of Madagascar, where they socialize in troops—and where, like humans, they are often involved in power struggles and family disputes. Threats to the environment have endangered lemurs, but Dr. Jolly hopes that by studying these unusual animals she’ll discover ways for people to live in harmony with their distant primate cousins.

Reading Level: Ages 6-12
Hardcover: 64 Pages

From School Library Journal:
"Knight's excellent-quality, full-color photographs fill the pages with landscapes, close-ups, and lemur interaction. The fluid, but nonlinear text will appeal to nature lovers with some background in the subject matter."

This dramatic picture-book biography brings to life—with illustrations that glow with wit and inspiration—the fascinating story of the quest to measure longitude. While the scientific establishment of the eighteenth century was certain that the answer lay in mapping the heavens, John Harrison, an obscure, uneducated clockmaker, dared to imagine a different solution: a seafaring clock. How Harrison held fast to his vision and dedicated his life to the creation of a small jewel of a timepiece that would change the world is a compelling story, as well as a memorable piece of history, science, and biography.

Reading Level: Ages 9-11
Hardcover: 48 Pages

In 1761, a young African girl was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, who named her Phillis after the slave schooner that had carried her. Kidnapped from her home in Africa and shipped to America, she’d had everything taken from her—her family, her name, and her language.

But Phillis Wheatley was no ordinary young girl. She had a passion to learn, and the Wheatleys encouraged her, breaking with unwritten rule in New England to keep slaves illiterate. Amid the tumult of the Revolutionary War, Phillis Wheatley became a poet and ultimately had a book of verse published, establishing herself as the first African American woman poet this country had ever known. She also found what had been taken away from her and from slaves everywhere: a voice of her own.

Reading Level: Ages 8-11
Hardcover: 40 Pages

High above the shadowy rainforest floor, scientist Meg Lowman climbs through the brilliant and vivid world of the canopy—one of the last uncharted places on our planet. Up here, spider monkeys spring through branches, moving in fluid loops and arcs, and bats swoop and dart. Vipers coil among buttress roots, waiting in ambush. A rare tree salamander slinks into the petals of an orchid. Suddenly, through the avenues of emerald light, a pair of macaws sweeps past, splattering the air with color. This is the timeless world of the rainforest canopy, home to thousands of creatures, a world that until recently humans could only dream of, standing far below on the forest floor. Kathryn Lasky and Chistopher G. Knight, an award-winning children’s book team, offer an unprecedented glimpse into the rainforest canopy, the most beautiful roof in the world..

Reading Level: Ages 6-12
Hardcover: 48 Pages

Smithsonian Magazine Best Science Books 1997
Cricket Magazine Editor's Choice for 1998

In the mid-1800s, 14-year-old Slocum ran away to sea to escape the drudgery of his father's boot shop. By the time he was 25, he was a sea captain. He married an adventurous woman, who joined him on his travels and raised their children at sea. Toward the end of the century, the age of the great sailing ships was drawing to a close, and Slocum found himself out of work. He repaired an old sloop and, in 1898, became the first man to sail around the world alone.

Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 48 Pages

Born December 23, 1867, Sarah Breedlove Walker was the first free-born child of sharecroppers in Delta, Louisiana. Life was hard, but slavery had ended, and the Breedlove family was free—and if you were free, you could dream.

And dream she did. Vision of Beauty follows Sarah Breedlove Walker’s rise from a bleak world of poverty and discrimination to unprecedented success as a businesswoman and philanthropist. Through tenacity and faith, she discovered a cure for her own hair loss, then began marketing her original products through the Mme. C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Well known as a woman of economic independence, Madam Walker offered a vision of dignity and freedom for her people and a powerful role model for women and girls of all races.

Reading Level: Ages 8-11
Paperback: 48 Pages

From the time he was a baby, Eratosthenes was full of wonder and questions. Wherever he went as he grew up, and whatever he did, his curiosity and questions propelled him from one discovery to the next. More than anything, however, Eratosthenes wanted to find out how to measure the earth. Everyone knew the earth was round, but no one knew how big around it was. Eratosthenes knew he couldn't walk around the world to measure it, but could he stand in one spot and figure it out? How he did, coming up with a measurement that is only two hundred miles different from our own calculations today, is an inspiring story that is a celebration of curiosity and a tribute to the questing mind.

Reading Level: Ages 6-10
Hardcover: 48 Pages

Library of Congress, Notable Children's Book

Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall are very proper Boston ladies, but they find the latest nineteenth-century fashion in women’s hats appalling. All over town, fashionable ladies are parading around with dead birds perched upon their heads! So Minna and Harriet gather together the most prominent people in the area to form a club to protect the birds—the Audubon Society. Eventually they garner enough nationwide attention to initiate the passage of important bird protection acts.

Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 40 Pages
Paperback: 40 Pages

New York Times, 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books

In this beautifully illustrated biography, Mark Twain’s adventures as a young boy come to life. Before Samuel Clemens became a famous author, he enjoyed one of the longest childhoods in history. From playing hooky in Hannibal, Missouri, to piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River, Mark Twain’s adventures as a youth influenced his entire life and figured prominently in his writing. Focusing on the first half of Clemens’s life, this book will be enjoyed by longtime Twain devotees—and by those who seek a colorful introduction to the ever-popular author and his works.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 48 Pages

In New England, there is a time between winter and spring when the combination of freezing nights and warm days starts sap flowing in the maple trees. This is sugaring time, when families like the Laceys of central Vermont engage in that still-flourishing American tradition, the gathering of maple sap for boiling into delectable maple syrup.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 64 Pages
Paperback: 64 Pages

Newbery Honor Book
ALA Notable
New York Times 13 Best Children's Books 1983

Many cultures have celebrations that commemorate their ancestors. Mexico's celebration, los Dias de Muertos, the Days of the Dead can be like a carnival, Young people throng the streets dressed up in ghoulish costumes. They beg for calaveras (treats), like candy skulls made of sugar or chocolate, and everyone buys pan de muerto, bread decorated with a pattern of bones. This is also a time for families to reunite in remembrance of those who have died. People go to market to buy what is needed for the ofrenda, or offering to the souls of the departed—special foods and other favorite items. The next morning everyone goes to the cemetery to visit the graves of loved ones who have died. They bring hoes to clear away weeds, and flowers to plant. All through the night, they pray and sing by candlelight in celebration of the Days of the Dead.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 48 Pages

Laura Ingalls lived on the Midwestern prairie over one hundred years ago, and Meribah Knight lives near modern Boston. Yet Meribah is fascinated with Laura's life, so different from her own. One night, Meribah asks her mother how far you’d have to travel to find the big woods today. Her mother tells her that many of the places mentioned in the "Little House" books are still there.

Soon, Meribah, her mom, dad, and brother Max travel to South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, to see the places where Laura really lived. The trip holds some wonderful surprises as well as a few disappointments, but there are times when Meribah feels that just around a bend, or in a grove of cottonwoods, there may be a little girl named Laura watching, and waiting to say hello...

Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Paperback: 48 Pages

On the leaf of a milkweed plant in Maine, a monarch butterfly lays a minuscule egg. Soon a caterpillar hatches, and before long a new butterfly flutters in the breeze. Within its lifetime this tiny monarch will fly more than two thousand miles on a mysterious migration south. On the way it will join millions of other migrating monarchs—some coming from as far north as Canada—creating shimmering rivers in the sky. At the end of their journey these monarchs will be greeted by people whose lives have been changed by their beauty and mystery.

Reading Level: Ages 8-12
Hardcover: 64 Pages

Parents’ Choice Gold Award
WA Post/Children's Bk Guild NF Award

Early on a November morning in 1963, off the coast of Iceland, a volcanic eruption was taking place deep under the ocean. On the surface, the crew of a nearby fishing boat were noticing some strange things: a sulfurous aroma in the air and the ocean swirling around the boat. Then, just before dawn, the volcanic eruption that had been increasing in intensity under the sea broke the surface and spewed lava miles into the air just four miles from their fishing boat. By the next morning, however, something even more incredible had occurred. The cinder cone of the volcano had broken the surface of the water; a new island had been born. It was the newest place on earth.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 64 Pages

ALA Notable, 1993
NCTE CLA Notable Children's Book in Language Arts
Obis Pictus Nominee, Best Non-Fiction Book ,1992

In the Badlands of Montana, many stories are waiting to be told—about Triceratops and Ankylosaurus and ancient crocodiles. There, scientists search for the bones of animals that lived millions of years ago. In Dinosaur Dig, Kathryn Lasky and Christopher Knight, the award-winning writer-and-photographer team, describe the dirty sweaty and exciting job they and five other families perform as they search for fossils in the Badlands.

Reading Level: Ages 8-11
Paperback: 48 Pages

Parenting Reading Magic Awards
Parent's Choice Honor Book Booklist Best Books 1990
ALA Notable Book 1990
ohn Burroughs Outstanding Nature Books 1990

Millions of years ago, there was a creature on the African savanna. We don't know who this creature was or what it looked like, but it was the last ancestor we shared with the great apes. After that, hominids, members of the human family, branched in one direction and the great apes went in another. Scientists called paleoanthropologists have been searching for this common ancestor for a hundread years. Their work is painstakingly slow, and imagination matters just as much as their tools of excavation. Sometimes they get lucky. Their discoveries have shaken our view of ourselves as we try to envision ancestors millions of years old.

Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 144 Pages

Kathryn Lasky Knight recorded the words of her five-year-old son as the family awaited, and then celebrated, the birth of their new baby. This engaging combination of text and Dad's photographs captures the anticipation, impatience, apprehension, and joy involved in the arrival of Max’s baby.

Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 48 Pages
Paperback: 48 Pages