The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science
10 best books like The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science (Marc Aronson): Frog Song, Harlem Hellfighters, Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far), Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope, Brief Histories of Everyday Objects, The Animal Review: The Genius, Mediocrity, and Breathtaking Stupidity That Is Nature, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today, Why Fish Fart and Other Useless Or Gross Information About the World, The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond, One World, One Day
| Author | Brenda Z. Guiberson |
| ISBN | 0805092544 |
Frog Song describes the lives of eleven different kinds of frogs and toads, from their croaks and bellows, to their habitats, to their birthing methods. (The male Darwin's frog, for example, carries its tadpoles in its vocal sacs for seven weeks as they grow.) A note in the back gives more detail about...
| Author | J. Patrick Lewis |
| ISBN | 1568462468 |
"Lewis's poetics are perfectly complemented by Kelley's evocative pastel illustrations, which both inspire and unsettle." –New York Times
They went by many names, but the world came to know them best as the Harlem Hellfighters. Two thousand strong, these black Americans from New York...
| Author | Dave Barry |
| ISBN | 1423340868 |
I think Dave Barry retired at the right time. I grew up loving his humor, but it's become more and more formulaic as time goes on, and there's only so many times that the letters in someone's name rearranged, or a goofy suggested band name, or even, dare I say it, a fart joke, can be funny. This book is mostly...
| Author | Bridget Heos |
| ISBN | 0547681267 |
In The Spider Silk Scientists, readers enter Randy Lewis' lab where they come face to face with golden orb weaver spiders, as their silk is combined with goat's milk to weave a nearly indestructible fiber.
Learn how this amazing material can be used to repair or replace...
| Author | Andy Warner |
| ISBN | 1250078652 |
Hilarious, entertaining, and illustrated histories behind some of life's most common and underappreciated objects - from the paperclip and the toothbrush to the sports bra and roller skates
In the tradition of A Cartoon History of the Universe and, most recent, Randall Munroe's What If?...
| Author | Jacob Lentz |
| ISBN | 1608190250 |
Ever since our ancestors first set eyes on a woolly mammoth and agreed that it needed hunting, human beings have been making judgments about animals. The king cobra: That's an A-plus animal. The garden snail? D-minus. On a good day.
In Animal Review, Jacob Lentz and Steve Nash give authoritative...
| Author | Cynthia Levinson |
| ISBN | 1561459453 |
Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution.
Husband-and-wife team Cynthia and Sanford Levinson take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced--then they offer possible...
| Author | Francesca Gould |
| ISBN | 1585427578 |
Weird and gross facts about history, the human body, and the natural world are presented in short entries. As is typical with these sorts of books, I think some of the info was a little exaggerated.
I do like that the author educates readers about the gross (and cruel) origin of the hormone replacement...
| Author | Patrick Dillon |
| ISBN | 0763669903 |
Aspiring architects will be in their element! Explore this illustrated narrative history of buildings for young readers, an amazing construction in itself.
We spend most of our lives in buildings. We make our homes in them. We go to school in them. We work in them. But why and how did people start...
| Author | Barbara Kerley |
| ISBN | 1426304617 |
One World, One Day uses exquisite, moving photographs and Barbara Kerley’s poetic text to convey a simple yet profound concept: we are one global family. This is a sophisticated concept book, presented as an elegant picture book with contributions from top international photographers.
This...
| Author | Pamela S. Turner |
| ISBN | 0544416198 |
One of the biggest differences between humans and animals is the ability to understand the idea of “If I do X, Y might happen.” New Caledonian crows seem to possess the intelligence to understand this “causal” concept. Why do crows have this ability? What does the crow know and what does it tell...
| Author | Scott Reynolds Nelson |
Who was the real John Henry? The story of this legendary African-American figure has come down to us in so many songs, stories, and plays, that the facts are often lost. Historian Scott Nelson brings John Henry alive for young readers in his personal quest for the true story of the man behind the myth. Nelson...
| 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 | Katherine Roy |
| ISBN | 1596438746 |
Up close with the ocean's most fearsome and famous predator and the scientists who study them—just thirty miles from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge!
A few miles from San Francisco lives a population of the ocean's largest and most famous predators. Each fall, while the city's inhabitants...
| Author | Jon Scieszka |
| ISBN | 0062316524 |
Jon Scieszka's Guys Read anthology series for tweens turns to nonfiction in its fifth volume, True Stories. The fifth installment in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading features ten stories that are 100% amazing, 100% adventurous, 100% unbelievable—and 100% true. A star-studded group of award-winning...
Plastic, Ahoy!: Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
| Author | Patricia Newman |
| ISBN | 1467712833 |
Three scientists are on a mission to study a massive accumulation of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, AKA the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The scientific method unfolds as they conduct their investigation. Their adventures introduce readers to the basics of ocean science and the hazards of plastics.
--Green...
Chasing Cheetahs: The Race to Save Africa's Fastest Cat
| Author | Sy Montgomery |
| ISBN | 0547815492 |
Since the year 1900, cheetah footprints quickly dwindled in African dirt as the species plummeted from more than 100,000 to fewer than 10,000. At the Cheetah Conservation Fund's (CCF) African headquarters in Namibia, Laurie Marker and her team save these stunning, swift, and slender creatures...
| Author | Steve Jenkins |
| ISBN | 0544233514 |
Dear axolotl: Why do you have feathers growing out of your head? Axolotl: They aren't feathers—they're gills! They let me breathe underwater.
Let's face it. Even as babies, we humans pay close attention to faces. Observing another person's features and expressions tells us whether they...
| Author | Sarah C. Campbell |
| ISBN | 1620916274 |
Nature’s repeating patterns, better known as fractals, are beautiful, universal, and explain much about how things grow. Fractals can also be quantified mathematically. Here is an elegant introduction to fractals through examples that can be seen in parks, rivers, and our very own backyards....
| Author | Sarah Albee |
| ISBN | 0802734227 |
There are about ten quintillion insects in the world-and some of them have affected human history in tremendous ways! For as long as humans have been on earth, we've co-existed with insects . . . for better or for worse. Once you begin to look at world history through fly-specked glasses, you begin to see...
