Days after arriving in San Francisco from Texas, eleven-year-old orphan Nicholas Dray tries to help his new neighbors survive the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent fires. The year is 1906, and ten-year-old Nick Bray, just orphaned, steals away from the migrant cotton camp to San Francisco. No sooner does he find himself a basement to sleep in and a job at a stationery shop than the great quake strikes. Just as he and his boss's dog,...

"The WWII invasion of Allied troops into German-occupied Europe, known as D-Day, was the largest military endeavor in history. By the time it occurred on June 6, 1944, Hitler and the Axis powers had a chokehold grip on the European continent, which the Allies called "Fortress Europe." Behind enemy lines, Nazi Germany was engaged in the mass extermination of the Jewish people and the oppression of civilians across Europe. The goal of D-Day was no less...

"As a hurricane gathered in the Caribbean, blue skies covered Galveston, Texas. Scientists knew a storm was coming. But none of them were able to prepare Galveston for the force of the hurricane that hit on September 8, 1900. The water from the storm surge pulled houses off their foundations, and the winds toppled telephone poles and trees like toothpicks. And amid the chaos, Galveston's residents did all they could to rescue one another. From the...

A creative nonfiction story of an immigrant girl explains how she learned English by reading about Monarch butterflies, and how, troubled by their decline, she got her classmates and neighbors together to build a butterfly garden.

"A thrilling account of the most daring American POW rescue mission of World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, America entered World War II, and a new theater of battle opened up in the Pacific. But US troops, along with thousands of Filipino soldiers who fought alongside them, were overtaken in the Philippines by a fiercely determined Japanese navy, and many Americans and Filipino fighters were killed or captured.These American and...

Read about the importance of cotton in America's history and learn about the lives of people who picked it and worked with it

Describes the relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, and includes excerpts from letters written by Annie about her work with Helen

The story of America's little known war-within-a war -- that of the "silent service" -- U.S. submarine warfare during World War II.

As a child, John Avery Lomax loved the songs he heard the cowboys singing along the nearby Chisholm Trail. He began writing them down at an early age. As John grew older, he traveled the country collecting and recording cowboy songs, helping to preserve many favorites