Grade 5

When Mom's Away captures a young girl's delight in dressing up as some of the people in portraits by Auguste Renoir. Her joy and her observations highlight the brilliance and verve of the… Read More →

Science writer and plant expert Rebecca E. Hirsch presents fun and gross facts about a variety of plants along with explaining the science behind why they do what they do. Featured plants… Read More →

Fifteen-year-old Laurel Mawston has just moved to the Mississippi River town of New Madrid with her parents and brother when disaster strikes. A series of terrible earthquakes devastate New… Read More →

Icebergs brighten as the sky peels itself of darkness and stretches awake. . . . Welcome, Summer. We've been waiting for you. Experience summer like you've never experienced it… Read More →

When Abraham Lincoln became president in March 1861, the United States was on the brink of the Civil War. Six states had already left the Union. The North and the South fought over the… Read More →

When President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the size of the United States almost doubled. Suddenly, the country stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to… Read More →

Henry is visiting his grandmother in the hospital. When his nanny has to take a call, he decides to go on alone. He knows Grandma well, after all. But the hospital is bigger than he thought… Read More →

White Fang, a wolf-dog mix, grows up in a village in Canada's Yukon Territory. Shunned by other dogs because of his wolf blood, he learns to defend himself and becomes a vicious killer. When… Read More →

Do you know who invented the airplane? Most Americans believe it was Wilbur and Orville Wright. But what if that's not true? What if a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead beat the… Read More →

Do you know who invented the light bulb? Most Americans will tell you it was Thomas Edison. But what if they're wrong? What if a British scientist named Joseph Swan was filing for the rights… Read More →

Most people believe Thomas Edison was the mastermind of motion pictures. But what if another budding inventor filed a patent for a movie camera just before Edison? Photographer William… Read More →

You may have heard the story of how Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio, but what if it isn't entirely true? What if the brilliant young inventor Nikola Tesla was working on advancing radio… Read More →

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, right? That's what most people will tell you. But what if they're wrong? What if Scottish-born inventor Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was working… Read More →

It's something many people use every day, but do you know who invented the television? David Sarnoff, the powerful radio executive, is often thought of as the Father of Television. But the… Read More →

By the mid-1800s, thousands of white settlers were traveling westward through the Great Plains. Pioneers built farms and ranches, and companies laid railroads and dug mines. But the plains… Read More →

William Penn was only twenty-two years old the first time he went to prison. He had attended a meeting of the Quakers, people who practiced a religion forbidden in Britain during the 1600s… Read More →

In June 1692, a jury in Salem, Massachusetts, found Bridget Bishop guilty of performing witchcraft. The only evidence against her was villagers' testimony. As punishment she was publicly… Read More →

In May 1787, men from all over the United States arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on serious business. Just eleven years earlier, colonial leaders had met in Philadelphia to declare… Read More →

On May 26, 1838, U.S. soldiers surrounded Cherokee villages across Georgia. The soldiers came to force Cherokee families to move to a new territory in Oklahoma. The Cherokees had little time… Read More →