Ain't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry
10 best books like Ain't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry (Scott Reynolds Nelson): Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot, We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai, The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe, The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks, Chuck Close: Face Book, Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science, Lady Liberty, Celebritrees: Historic & Famous Trees of the World
| Author | Sy Montgomery |
| ISBN | 0618494170 |
On remote Codfish Island off the southern coast of New Zealand live the last ninety-one kakapo parrots on earth. These trusting, flightless, and beautiful birds—the largest and most unusual parrots on earth—have suffered devastating population loss.
Now, on an island refuge with...
| Author | Kadir Nelson |
| ISBN | 0786808322 |
Rube Foster was the founder of the Negro National League. Said he of his men, "We are the ship: all else the sea." As long as there has been baseball in America there have been African-American ballplayers. Men like Sol White and Bud Fowler. Before Rube Foster, however, there was no organized professional...
| Author | Claire A. Nivola |
| ISBN | 0374399182 |
Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, grew up in the highlands of Kenya, where fig trees cloaked the hills, fish filled the streams, and the people tended their bountiful gardens. But over many years, as more and more land was cleared, Kenya was transformed....
| Author | Loree Griffin Burns |
| ISBN | 0547152310 |
Without honey bees the world would be a different place. There would be no honey, no beeswax for candles, and, worst of all, barely a fruit, nut, or vegetable to eat. So imagine beekeeper Dave Hackenburg’s horror when he discovered twenty million of his charges had vanished. Those missing bees...
| Author | Barb Rosenstock |
| ISBN | 0803737106 |
Caldecott medalist Mordicai Gerstein captures the majestic redwoods of Yosemite in this little-known but important story from our nation's history. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt joined naturalist John Muir on a trip to Yosemite. Camping by themselves in the uncharted woods, the two men...
| Author | Chuck Close |
| ISBN | 1419701630 |
This fascinating, interactive autobiography presents Chuck Close’s story, his art, and a discussion of the many processes he uses in the studio. The question-and-answer format is based on real kids’ inquiries about Close’s life and work, and his answers to them. Close, who is wheelchair-bound...
| Author | Tanya Lee Stone |
| ISBN | 0763636118 |
They had the right stuff. They defied the prejudices of the time. And they blazed a trail for generations of women to follow.
What does it take to be an astronaut? Excellence at flying, courage, intelligence, resistance to stress, top physical shape — any checklist would include these. But...
| Author | Marc Aronson |
| ISBN | 1426311087 |
Growing up in South Dakota, Adrienne Mayor was the quiet girl who never raised her hand in class. Instead, she loved to wander the prairie seeking wonders and filling her mind with stories.
When she found herself in Athens, Greece, she plunged into reading the original versions of ancient myths--especially...
| Author | Doreen Rappaport |
| ISBN | 0763625302 |
A powerfully moving, authentic portrait of the Statue of Liberty, told through the eyes of those who created her and illustrated in glorious detail.
"Soon America will be one hundred years old. I share my dream of a birthday gift."
It begins in 1865 as a romantic idea, but ten years later...
| Author | Margi Preus |
| ISBN | 0805078290 |
Some trees have lived many lifetimes, standing as silent witnesses to history. Some are remarkable for their age and stature; others for their usefulness. A bristlecone pine tree in California has outlived man by almost 4,000 years; a baobab tree in Australia served as a prison for Aboriginal prisoners...
| Author | Elizabeth Partridge |
| ISBN | 0670035351 |
Before Springsteen and before Dylan, there was Woody Guthrie. With "This Machine Kills Fascists," scrawled across his guitar in big black letters, Woody Guthrie brilliantly captured in song the experience of twentieth-century America. Whether he sang about union organizers, migrant workers,...
| Author | Nic Bishop |
| ISBN | 0439877555 |
For the first- to third-grade set, frogs are an endless source of fascination, especially when looked at VERY close up. See tiny poison dart frogs and mammoth bullfrogs, as Nic Bishop's amazing images show the beauty and diversity of frogs from around the globe. And simple, engaging text conveys basic...
| Author | Candace Fleming |
| ISBN | 0375836187 |
The award-winning author of Ben Franklin’s Almanac and Our Eleanor has created an enthralling joint biography of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, and his complex wife—a scrapbook history that uses photographs, letters, engravings, and even cartoons, along with a fascinating text,...
| Author | Teri Kanefield |
| ISBN | 1419707965 |
Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school,...
| Author | Sid Fleischman |
| ISBN | 0061344311 |
"Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth." So begins Sid Fleischman's ramble-scramble biography of the great American author and wit, who started life in a Missouri village as a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens.
Abandoning a career as a young steamboat...
| Author | Elizabeth Rusch |
| ISBN | 0547503504 |
“At 11:35 p.m., as Radio Armero played cheerful music, a towering wave of mud and rocks bulldozed through the village, roaring like a squadron of fighter jets.” Twenty-three thousand people died in the 1985 eruption of Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz. Today, more than one billion people worldwide...
| Author | Marc Tyler Nobleman |
| ISBN | 0375838023 |
JERRY SIEGEL AND Joe Shuster, two misfit teens in Depression-era Cleveland, were more like Clark Kent—meek, mild, and myopic—than his secret identity, Superman. Both boys escaped into the worlds of science fiction and pulp magazine adventure tales. Jerry wrote stories, and Joe illustrated...
| Author | Jim Murphy |
| ISBN | 0439691842 |
Two-time Newbery Honor Book author has written an amazing account of one of America's most famous hoaxes!
When a 10-foot tall purported "petrified man" is unearthed from a backyard in upstate New York in 1869, the discovery immediately turns into a spectacle of epic proportions. News of the...
| Author | Janet Schulman |
| ISBN | 0375845585 |
The birdwatchers of Central Park were buzzing–a young red-tailed hawk had been spotted, would he stay? The bird they dubbed Pale Male not only stayed, he became one of New York City’s most famous residents. Pale Male and his mate built their nest near the top of one of Fifth Avenue’s swankiest apartment...
This book is stunning. The gorgeous cover caught my attention while I was cataloging it, and I had to pause to read through. I can't decide which element of it is the best (that's a lie, it's obviously the spectacular illustrations)—but the subject itself is fascinating, and even the author's and illustrator's...
| Author | Faith D'Aluisio |
| ISBN | 1582462461 |
Sitting down to a daily family meal has long been a tradition for billions of people. But in every corner of the world this age-old custom is rapidly changing. From increased trade between countries to the expansion of global food corporations like Kraft and Nestlé, current events are having a tremendous...
