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He accomplishes this without doing the deep dive into digital camera functionality that befuddles most users. Instead he creates a user-friendly journey through his own experience, touching on those aspects of the visual experience that painting and photography have in common and leaving the reader with a better understanding of how photography can indeed make an artist a better painter.

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David Antenborough narrates this picture-book send-up of a nature documentary, sounding just like the real-life David but with more gesticulations, since he has six limbs at his disposal. Director Stephen Spielbug tries to keep the cast of characters on task, but it’s worse than herding cats: The orb-weaving spider would like to eat one or two other actors; the grasshopper is a diva; the worm is too busy munching dirt to emerge from the ground on cue; the robin has joined a union and declines to show up for the predation scene; and the slug is too embarrassed by his slime to perform. As David and Stephen near the wrap-up, filming is interrupted by a whuffling noise and then a foul-smelling hurricane, and Fido the dog sniffs his way through the grass and onto their set. The panicked actors flee at top speed (which is not very fast in the slug’s case), but the intrepid Antenborough continues narrating, Spielbug keeps directing, and they bring the film to a dramatic conclusion. Despite the chaos—or maybe because of it—we learn some things about these animals, and backmatter nature facts give us more.

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THE STORY I WANT TO TELL pairs the work of 20 aspiring young writers—including immigrants from war-ravaged countries—with original stories, essays, and poems from Richard Blanco, Richard Russo, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dave Eggers, Lily King, Jonathan Lethem, Bill Roorbach, Monica Wood, and other top writers in a call-and-response anthology.The book's supplemental materials make it a perfect tool for writers' groups and writing teachers.

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Eva Murray moved to Matinicus in 1987 to teach in its one-room school. She married an island man and stayed to raise their family there. Over the years she's written a number of lively columns and articles for mainland publications. But, as she says, she doesn't do lobster wars:"If you're looking for a rabid, swashbuckling tell-all account of maritime outlaws or cut-throat lobstermen, you won't be very impressed. Yes, a rough side of this community exists, but in order to live here happily, I avoid cultivating fear. The same boys who might sprinkle roofing nails in a man's driveway, if they get mad enough, will rush to the same fellow's aid when he's in real danger, and that's the truth. Likewise, if you hope to relive an idyllic summer vacation or read an escape-to-Maine fantasy with the call of the loon and long walks on the beach, you might feel a bit short-changed. Astonishing natural beauty certainly exists on Matinicus Island, but I'm not working too hard to promote this place to visitors. The rare treat of an outer-island sunrise is a privilege for the deserving, which means for those who have endured the six months of gales or the six weeks of fog or the six days of waiting for the weather to break so the airplane can fly and they can get here. In the twenty-three years I have lived here, it's true there have been bullets. One, I think, flew right over my head a few years back. There has been vandalism, drunk driving, sabotage, theft, abuse of power, and people just acting like general-purpose jerks. Those things happen everywhere. There have also been heroic rescues, valiant searches for lost mariners, hospice care, fires fought, electricity restored, boats rescued, spontaneous celebrations and heartfelt acts of support, and graves dug by hand. In those things, we may be different from most places, and here's why: It is not strictly the certified professionals who fight the fires or care for the sick or save the drowning. It's just us."These are the stories of that unique community, of an interdependence that is all too rare these days but necessary for this island's survival. Murray writes with a keen eye and sharp wit, sharing stories that are sometimes poignant, sometimes mind-boggling, and often hilarious. She lives in a place where, "You love it, absolutely love it here, 51 percent of the time. That is enough to make you stay."

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It is also the story of the valley's rogue river, Wild River; of a raging wildfire and the disappearance of an entire village community; of both land abuse and land stewardship; of ecological disaster and renewal; of nature's vulnerability and resiliency; and of people who experienced tragedy and good fortune. Amazingly, through the centuries a single mighty hemlock tree survived to be a living witness to it all. Dean Bennett, who has spent a lifetime exploring the natural world and its human connections, brings to life this surprising story of the power of nature to renew. Illustrated with photographs and maps and Bennett's beautiful illustrations, Nature and Renewal has a message for everyone.

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In the late 1800s the ninth generation of Vickerys expanded the family network to the Montana and Wyoming borderlands, and their stories of pioneer ranching and mining mirror the entrepreneurial spirit of their colonial ancestors, Hawkes keeps a keen historian's eye on the facts while weaving a fascinating tale.

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Bunting has a knack for spotting the unusual in a photograph, or some minor detail that, in fact, tells a major story about the how and why. From granite quarry operations to an itinerant cobbler in a sailing scow to hootchie-kootchie dancers at the state fair to deepwater ships, his page-long captions place these images in social and economic context--but this is not dry history. His research has uncovered a wealth of fascinating, often quirky detail (did you know that mummy wrappings were imported from Egypt for Maine papermaking?), and he makes frequent forays into the Maine storytelling tradition.

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From the award-winning team behind Magnificent Homespun Brown, Samara Cole Doyon and Coretta Scott King Award Honoree Kaylani Juanita, comes a song of gratitude for those who see the world in a different way

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From the author-illustrator of The Eye of the Whale (Tilbury House, 2013), this nonfiction picture book tells the story of Lawrence Anthony and the deep bond he forged with the matriarch of the herd he saved at his animal reserve in South Africa. When Lawrence died, the matriarch led all the elephants from remote parts of the reserve in a procession to his home, where they gathered to mourn him. They returned on the same day at the same time for the next two years -- because elephants remember. This moving story of human-elephant mutual love and respect will inspire readers of all ages.

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Big lies are told by governments, politicians, and corporations to avoid responsibility, cast blame on the innocent, win elections, disguise intent, create chaos, and gain power and wealth. Big lies are as old as civilization. They corrupt public understanding and discourse, turn science upside down, and reinvent history. They prevent humanity from addressing critical challenges. They perpetuate injustices. They destabilize the world. The modern age has provided ever-more-effective ways of spreading lies, but it has also given us the scientific method, which is the most effective tool for finding what is true. In the book’s final chapter, Kurlansky reveals ways to deconstruct an allegation. A scientific theory has to be testable, and so does an allegation. BIG LIES soars across history: alighting on the “noble lies” of Socrates and Plato; Nero blaming Christians for the burning of Rome; the great injustices of the Middle Ages; the big lies of Stalin and Hitler and their terrible consequences; the reckless lies of contemporary demagogues, which are amplified through social media; lies against women and Jews are two examples in the long history of “othering” the vulnerable for personal gain; up to the equal-opportunity spotlight in America. “Belief is a choice,” Kurlansky writes, “and honesty begins in each of us. A lack of caring what is true or false is the undoing of democracy. The alternative to truth is a corrupt state in which the loudest voices and most seductive lies confer power and wealth on grifters and oligarchs. We cannot achieve a healthy planet for all the world’s people if we do not keep asking what is true.”

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Alya and Atik are stars. Their job is to twinkle in the night sky over Earth and for billions of years they do it well. Plants stretch towards them. Animals look up at them. And, eventually, humans gaze up at them and marvel. But then humans invent powerplants, factories and cars, and smog pours into Earth’s atmosphere. It becomes harder and harder for Alya and Atik to do their jobs until, finally, the stars yell at Earth and Earth feels sick and begins to shake and things look pretty dire. The clueless king’s response is to command Earth to stop shaking. But a little girl named Axiom tells the king to hush then tells humans what they must do to make the Earth feel better. When the Earth Shook provides a mythical framing for kids to understand that it will be their job to help save the Earth. Bravo, Axiom! Keep using that huge megaphone until the earth no longer shakes! Axiom’s list of instructions to humans; some well-known and others new but critically important appears in the back of the book.

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Smoke speaks in mesmerising riddles: “I lack a mouth, but I can speak… I lack hands, but I can push out unwanted guests… I’m gentler than a feather, but I can cause harm…” This rhythmically powerful narration is complemented by illustrations in which swirling smoke was captured on art paper held over smoky candle flames, and the dancing smoke textures were then deepened and elaborated with watercolours and Photoshop finishes. With this unique method, Mercè López “let the smoke decide how the idea I had in mind would dance with it, giving freedom to the images”. The resulting illustrations are astounding, and they resonate with the otherworldly text.

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Edward Hopper’s monster lurks outside the nighthawks’ diner. James Whistler’s monster rocks in her chair. Monsters invade masterpieces by Dorthea Tanning, Paul Cezanne, M.C. Escher, Jean Michel Basquiat, Giuseppe Archimboldo, Rene Magritte, Henri Rousseau, Franz Kline, Frida Kahlo, Bob Thompson, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Thomas Hart Benton and Helen Frankenthaler. The monster emerging from Claude Monet’s waterlilies is unforgettable. Our guide for this romp through re-imagined masterpieces is an engaging hamster. Thumbnail biographies of the artists identify their iconic works.

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So begins this lyrical tribute to the bugs, bees, and birds that make the garden such a busy place. With each turned page, more visitors appear, and all the while the “surprise”—a chrysalis—changes unnoticed until, on the last page, a butterfly emerges and flies away across the garden’s well-tended borders. Back-of-book notes about the natural histories of the garden’s denizens complete this lovely and lively portrait of backyard nature, which is also a gentle meditation on the rewards of paying attention. A chipmunk hides on every page to divert and engage young readers. Fountas & Pinnell Level O

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When a downcast Sergio gets home from a bad day at school, his wise mother listens sympathetically to his tale of woe and then suggests an experiment. Placing a bowl of marbles next to Grandfather’s old balance scale, she asks him to go back to the beginning of his day and remember each good and bad thing that happened. For each bad thing, he places a marble on the right-hand pan of the scale; for each good thing he places a marble on the left-hand pan. Sergio is amazed to discover that even on a day that felt awful, the good outweighed the bad.

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While Joey’s mother explains the context of numbers in vivid ways, Joey’s imagination transforms their ordinary car ride into a magical odyssey through a land of make-believe.

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Buddy Benches were introduced in Germany in 2014. When a child sits on the bench, it signals to other children to ask him or her to play. Patty Brozo’s children bring a playground to raucous life while Mike Deas’s illustrations invest their games with images of planes, dragons and elephants. The children match their imaginations with empathy, identifying and swooping up the lonely.

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Ms. Snowden and her class practice sending kind thoughts to the people they love, and they launch a class Kindness Project. There is only one problem: Henry can’t think of one kind thing he has done. Declaring that kindness is stupid, he stomps to the classroom door on the verge of tears, but his classmates save the day by reminding him of the kind things he has done for each of them.

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Ms. Snowden and her class practice sending kind thoughts to the people they love, and they launch a class Kindness Project. There is only one problem: Henry can’t think of one kind thing he has done. Declaring that kindness is stupid, he stomps to the classroom door on the verge of tears, but his classmates save the day by reminding him of the kind things he has done for each of them.

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Zombies, monsters, and dragons stalk this book’s pages. Cries of despair echo through them. Prisons and dungeons lie in wait. Is this a nightmare? Is it an apocalypse? Well, yes—because it’s the day before our narrator’s first day of school, and all entreaties to his mother are falling on deaf ears. Why should he go to school when he already knows two letters, “N” and “O,” and he knows they spell NO!, which is exactly the word this occasion demands? Why aren’t these magic letters working anymore? Lexile Level 490; F&P Level L

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More than two centuries before Einstein, using a crude telescope and a mechanical timepiece, Danish astronomer Ole Romer measured the speed of light with astounding accuracy. How was he able to do this when most scientists didn’t even believe that light traveled? Like many paradigm-shattering discoveries, Romer’s was accidental. Night after night he was timing the disappearance and reappearance of Jupiter’s moon Io behind the huge, distant planet. Eventually he realized that the discrepancies in his measurements could have only one explanation: Light had a speed, and it took longer to reach Earth when Earth was farther from Jupiter. All he needed then to calculate light’s speed was some fancy geometry.

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Through color, shape,size, and other adaptations, city fish and country fish have evolved to survive in their particular habitats.In City Fish, Country Fish, Mary Cerullo uses this powerful analogy and Jeffrey Rotman’s vibrant underwater photos to captivate young readers with the wild variety of ocean life. The second edition of this popular book includes new information about the effects of climate change on fish and their habitats and about great white sharks, who are among the few species who roam back and forth between cold and tropical waters. Fountas & Pinnell Level T

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When Laura—a.k.a. Masterpiece Robot—heads into the backyard with her little sister Molly—a.k.a. Sidekick—her active imagination places them instead on patrol around the perimeter of a dystopian city, guarding against super villains. Then older sister Amber—a.k.a. Valerie Knick-Knack—throws handfuls of fallen leaves at them, unknowingly initiating a battle for the ages. The transitions back and forth from suburbia to dystopia in this story within a story are deftly rendered with contrasting palettes. The rollicking interactions of the sibling heroes and villains make Masterpiece Robot pure fun to read. Lexile Level 900 Fountas and Pinnell Level V

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At breakfast she learns she has been given a fresh start, and she decides to celebrate by doing things differently for the rest of the day. Melena chooses not to fight with her brother, and shares the money she has rather than demanding to be repaid by a less fortunate friend. This story introduces children to the concept of jubilee, which stresses the important principles of debt relief, generosity, and forgiveness. Aaron Boyd's mixed-media illustrations are as bright and vivid as a sun-washed day. Fountas & Pinnell Level M

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What followed was a rare and remarkable demonstration of animal behavior. This celebrated story, beautifully depicted in Jennifer O’Connell’s mesmerizing paintings, will make you wonder about animal emotions and the unique connections we can have with animals—even whales. Fountas & Pinnell Level M

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The villagers had tried expanding the school, but the money ran out before the project was finished. No money meant no materials, and that meant no more room for the students. Then one person got a wonderful, crazy idea: Why not use soda bottles, which were readily available, to form the cores of the walls? Sometimes thinking outside the box—or inside the bottle—leads to the perfect solution. Fountas & Pinnell Level Q

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When he runs off to the market instead of sticking around for a reading lesson, he encounters a much-admired older boy secretly reading at a book stall, and then Amadi becomes intrigued by a storybook with pictures of a strange white creature that has a carrot for a nose. Unable to shake his questions about the snowman, Amadi discovers the vast world reading can open up—especially for an Igbo boy of Nigeria.

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This lively board book unfolds accordian-style in a floor-standing arc, encouraging babies to lift their head while they are lying on their tummy, while toddlers will love the photos of diverse babies.

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That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a “quilt” (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi’s most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one. This authentic story with beautiful illustrations includes a glossary of Arabic words and a presentation of Arabic letters with their phonetic English equivalents.

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A search for one’s place in the world provides the storyline: The narrator, a drum, feels like an outcast because he alone—unlike his family and friends—cannot play a melody. Like all kids growing up, he must find out where he fits. The narrator, a drum, wanders the streets of Coelho’s vividly realised city of musical instruments—where even the birds sprout miniature trumpets from their mouths—feeling like an outcast because he alone, among all his family and neighbours, can’t play a melody. He adores his violin brother, cello father and piano mother but feels he has nothing to offer to their music. "My father is Cello, and oh, what a fellow. The tone of his laugh is low, smooth and mellow. But me? My name’s Drum. BOOM-CLACK, RAT-A-TAT. My head is a snare and I wear a hi-hat. My stomach’s a bass drum, my arms are drumsticks and my only song is CLICK-CLACK, CLACK-CLICK". But one day a trio of saxophones ask him to join their band and what they tell him gives him an epiphany "So that’s what a drum does! I now understand. I don’t carry a tune; I carry a band". But he must still prove it to himself, and that takes all his courage. Loubriel’s story of bravery and identity, infused with Latin rhythms and joy, provides a fine vehicle for Coelho’s vibrant technique and palette. Coelho’s city of music bursts with exuberance. In backmatter, Loubriel, a lifelong drummer, explains how the drum kit lays a song’s foundation. The bass drum is the heartbeat; the hi hat is the dynamic metronome; the snare drum is the drum kit’s singer.

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Henry is a lot of fun when he's not storming through the house, so Emma decides to teach him how to be still. By showing him how to sit, bow, and breathe, Emma is able to calm the hurricane within Henry. A perfect introduction to meditation for young readers, presented in a captivating story. The illustrations bring the story to life with delightful whimsy. Includes a back-of-book presentation of simple mindfulness techniques that can be shared at home and in the classroom. In Planting Seeds, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teaches that by sitting still and meditating, the mind can become clear. Like Hanh's apple juice story, when a glass of lemonade is stirred, the pulp swirls around. When it sits quietly, the pulp settles and the liquid becomes clear. In this way, a glass of lemonade is a metaphor for how meditation and mindfulness work. That is why this book is called The Lemonade Hurricane. Practicing mindfulness and meditation helps us tame the hurricane within. Fountas & Pinnell Level L

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Explores a question unasked by any other book for young readers: What can we learn about nature and evolution from the bizarre and exotic ways some animals have evolved to get life-giving oxygen? An inquiry-based book designed to stimulate active minds; a STEM standout from a celebrated nature photographer and writer.

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In October, 1812, as the 32-gun U.S. frigate Essex ventured out against the British enemy, only one man had any idea that this cruise would turn into the longest, strangest naval adventure in American history. That man was Captain David Porter, who had decided to run off with the navy's ship and its three hundred men to fight a separate Pacific war--one of privateering, pillaging, and orgies. Drawing on Porter's own writings and the accounts of eyewitnesses, the author memorably recounts the events of a dark and fatal voyage in which David Porter crosses the line from commander to cult-leader, from improbable fantasy to disastrous reality. In a tale so amazing that it reads like fiction, Porter, impelled by his own demons and by rivalry with the ghostly British buccaneer Lord Anson, took his men and boys on a seventeen-month mystery tour that did not end until he had disrupted the Chilean revolution, captured the entire English whaling fleet (manned mainly by Americans), vanished into the enchanted Galapagos, and re-emerged in Polynesia, where he made himself the conqueror-chief of the stone-age Nukuhivans. In the end, when he sought redemption with a glorious victory over a British opponent, he failed terribly and sacrificed the lives of one-third of his crew to his personal notions of heroism. Robert Booth tells the story of the ill-fated Essex with accuracy, immediacy, and a broad vision of its meanings as an epic of war, a gripping tale of the sea, a brilliant portrait of a disturbed and disturbing American hero, and a geo-political thriller that sheds new light on the origins of U.S. imperialism, the tragedy of missed opportunities, and the disastrous and permanent impact of Porter's rampage on the peoples of the Pacific.

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Consolidation is impractical, a daily commute is usually impossible, island families are determined to keep their communities viable, and all agree that a school is a central part of a stable, year-round community.You might think that these tiny schools are an anachronism, offering an old-fashioned approach to education. You'd be wrong. They are among the most technologically savvy schools in the state and offer a culturally rich educational experience. Author Eva Murray moved to Matinicus in 1987 to teach in the one-room school, married and raised a family on the island, and has served on the school board and volunteered in the school. She has traveled from island to island, collecting the stories that tell how these small communities promise their handful of children a modern education within the context of a specialized and sometimes extreme offshore lifestyle. The hows and whys will fascinate educators, and the details of island life will interest everyone.

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The Honorable Jonathan Jackson, an ex-state legislator and former gubernatorial assistant, is trying to puzzle out and understand one of those mind-boggling tragedies that occur from time to time in the course of U.S. public life an assassination. In this case, the victim was the man he worked for, Governor Richard N. Ellery. The anguish of this tragedy is compounded by the identity of the killer Jonathan Jackson s boyhood friend, a would-be Hollywood actor hung up on the dream of American success. The climactic action is set against the backdrop of a National Governors Conference in Los Angeles, a panorama of America s governing elite where governors and staff members, the media and entertainers have gathered for a final evening featuring an address by the president of the United States. This is also simultaneously the scene of the budding love story between Jackson and the lovely TV news anchor who would become his wife. Here, in the guise of a novel, is a view of our political system from within from municipalities to counties to a state and its ties to Washington, D.C. Whether it s walking Main Street to get the votes or debating gun control issues in a crowded auditorium, the real side of politics and government in O. Murray Carr springs to life in an engrossing tale that dramatically mirrors the way our country works.

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The inspiration for this book came from the tiny Pacific island of Kosrae in Micronesia, where Brewer native and Bangor Theological Seminary graduate the Reverend Galen Snow converted all of the natives to Christianity, and Portlander Harry Skillins left a record as a vicious pirate and who sired a line of descendants by native women. Others in these twenty chapters are far better known, such as poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Edna St. Vincent Millay, opera singer Lillian Nordica, and Hollywood movie director John Ford. But whether it is Woolwich's Sir William Phips, the wilderness shepherd boy who went to sea and found a Spanish treasure and was knighted by the king of England, or Brunswick's Asa Simpson, the forty-niner who built a lumber and shipping empire in Oregon, or John Frank Stevens of West Bath, the noted engineer who made the Panama Canal possible, or Franklin County's Mark Walker, a 1930s' radical during the Great Depression, these stories, varied as they are, provide a continuous range of Mainers' contributions to the world at large. Told chronologically from the time of pre-history Indians in Maine, they end in the present with a look at our current connections overseas and at several Maine women who have dedicated their lives to helping the poor in Central and South America.

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Bob, living in a farmhouse near the pond, buys a dilapidated camp at the water's edge and finds his way down there almost daily, to swim or ski, depending on the season. His friends discover the allure of the pond, too--summer afternoons of swimming with Bob, his wife Rita, and an assortment of canine dog-paddlers, or companionable conversations over a beer, enjoying the beauty of a quiet pond beyond the porch. Bob tells the McNairs about a neighboring camp up for sale, a perfect little camp, compact as a ship in all its details, and they buy it. Roorbach feels drawn to the pond so strongly that he and his wife sometimes bushwack through underbrush so as not to intrude, but the pond is a place where this trio of friendships flourishes. Told with humor and affection, the stories in this small book will appeal to anyone who feels drawn to spend time near water.

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In June of 1881, on the very night of their wedding in Searsport, Maine, Captain Lincoln Alden Colcord and his new wife, Jane Sweetser Colcord, departed for sea to begin a two-year voyage on the bark Charlotte A. Littlefield. The voyage would take them around the world and witness the birth of their daughter Joanna amid the South Sea Islands and young Lincoln's arrival during a treacherous winter storm off Cape Horn.Fifth generation seafarers, Joanna and Lincoln Colcord spent their youth at sea aboard their fathers' ships. Years later, looking back at his seafaring childhood Lincoln wrote, "I know no other home than a ship's deck, except the distant home in Maine that we visited for a few weeks every year or two. My countryside was the ocean floor, where I could roam only with the spyglass; my skyline was the horizon, broken by the ghostly silhouettes of passing vessels, or at intervals by the coasts of many continents, as we sailed the world."The Colcords' richly detailed "journal letters" to family members ashore, their logbooks, photographs, and later correspondence all give us a splendid window into the life of a seafaring family. We share their exhilaration in catching the trades under fair skies yet are ever conscious of the uncertainties of sea life: illness, the threat of typhoons and dismastings, wrecks and financial disaster. Life's tasks emerge as the family forges a home aboard ship, raises and educates the children, and seeks companionship in foreign ports, all while trying to eke out a living under sail.

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Sometimes nature is the world's greatest innovator

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Her name is Purple, and she is the only dash of color in William’s gray yard. She asks his name, and when he answers “Um, well…,” she dubs him Umwell the Gray, then leads him on an exploration of a world that is always new and beautiful to eyes that can see. This story is a celebration of the ever-present newness and change around and within us. Because newness is more readily discernible in nature than in human lives, the story relies on Purple’s guidance through the natural world to build a bridge to William’s inner world. Umwell the Gray can’t see what Purple sees in a falling leaf, a cloud, a swirling stream, a tidepool. She is demanding, challenging, frustrating, but compelling. Though he doesn’t understand her, he wants to be around her. Bit by bit the world comes to life for him, and as it does, Rebecca Evans’s palette evolves from gray to multihued. At last Umwell becomes William, but a different William than he was before. He is a new boy, looking out upon a new world.

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An enchanting picture book about the joyful, mysterious, awe-inspiring messages of light, whether emanating from a firefly or the sun, fireworks or the Big Bang, boats at sea or a bolt of lightning, a movie projector or a rainbow. Luciana Navarro Powell’s illustrations follow a group of kids through a magical day and evening in a seacoast town, while Christine Layton’s lyrical text explores the natural history of light. Backmatter provides further adventures in the science of light.

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...and the narrator could be any child anywhere, gazing out over the waters, thinking about all the places she could go and imagining other little blue houses on other shores, with other children gazing back. What child doesn’t love walking in the surf, feeling the water steal the sand from beneath her toes as a wave retreats? Who doesn’t love the salty smell of the air and the sight of ships far out on the horizon? What happens in the oceans is critically important to life on Earth. That’s why the girl in her little blue house wants to believe that the children gazing back from far over the horizon love the oceans as she does and wants to keep them safe, alive and beautiful.

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More than 99 percent of all life forms have gone extinct during the 3.6-billion-year history of life on Earth. Other organisms have changed dramatically, but not our extreme survivors. Evolution may have altered their physiology and behavior, but their body plans have stood the test of time. How have these living links with Earth’s prehistoric past survived? The search for answers is leading scientists to new discoveries about the past—and future—of life on Earth. The survival secrets of some of these ancient creatures could lead to new medicines and treatments for disease. Written in a lively, entertaining voice, Extreme Survivors provides detailed life histories and strange “survival secrets” of ten ancient animals and explains evolution and natural selection. Extensive back matter includes glossary, additional facts and geographic range for each organism and a geologic timeline of Earth. F&P Level V

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In this probing, plain-spoken book, based on a true story, Margy Burns Knight and Anne Sibley O'Brien, author and illustrator of the acclaimed Talking Walls, invite young readers to explore the human implications of intolerance. Anecdotes relating the experiences of other refugees and their contributions to American culture play counterpoint to Nary's tale, all enlivened by O'Brien's full-color pastels. A compendium at the end of the book offers more detailed information about Pol, Pot, Ellis Island, and other topics in this text. Who Belongs Here? will lead to discussions about The effects of war on children and familiesRefugees and relocation processes in the U.S.Cambodian cultureU.S. History and attitudes towards immigrationBullying and intoleranceConflict-resolution skills Lexile Level 1040 Fountas and Pinnell Level W

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It’s a powerful concept, exploring the routines and rituals of a child’s first year in diverse cultures and traditions and introducing readers to babies from tiny Luke, who is spending his first days of life in an incubator, to Kasa, who is being introduced to the sunrise by her grandmother. Nontraditional families—biracial, adoptive, and single-parent—are included. The ways in which babies are welcomed into the world are wonderfully varied yet strikingly kindred. Welcoming Babies is equally appropriate as a gift to new parents or grandparents and a read-aloud for babies. Lexile Level 990; F&P Level O

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Acadia Greene has done science in summer, autumn, and winter. In the fourth and final book of this series, she carries her search for answers into the spring, investigating meteors and mass extinctions; germination and pollinators; parasites, ticks, and Lyme disease; and pesticides and malaria. Finally, looking back through her notebooks, she puts together her scientific inquiries from all four seasons into a holistic understanding of the natural world. Acadia is curious, determined, bold, and bright—a wonderful STEAM ambassador! Lexile 750

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A melting snowman leads her—of course!—to explore climate change and how to reduce her carbon footprint. The helium balloons at her eleventh birthday party beg questions—naturally!—of molecular structure, weights of gases,and neutral buoyancy. An afternoon making paper airplanes brings discoveries in aerodynamics. Tracks in the snow raise questions of how animals survive the winter. And an afternoon of sledding slides right into an investigation of momentum, acceleration, and friction. Acadia doesn’t mean to do science—it just happens. She’s curious, determined, bold, and bright—a wonderful STEAM ambassador! The Acadia Files is a fun introduction to the wonders of science,using real-world scenarios to make scientific inquiry relatable and understandable. Parents and educators can use The Acadia Files to let kids discover for themselves what it’s like to be curious about the world and to satisfy that curiosity with scientific thinking.

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Acadia Greene wants answers. What happened to the frogs she used to see at her favorite local pond? Why do leaves change color in the fall, and why don’t evergreen needles do the same? What is the water cycle, and what is transpiration? How do time zones work, and why does the sun set at different times in different places within a single zone? How do germs infect us? Acadia doesn’t mean to do science, but she has questions and her parents refuse to simply give her the answers. “Conduct an experiment,” they tell her. “Use the scientific method.” So Acadia makes hypotheses, designs experiments, analyzes data, and draws conclusions. Acadia does science. The author, Katie Coppens writes a recurring column for NSTA's middle school magazine Science Scope on science and literacy called "The Integrated Classroom."

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