Showing titles in History & Culture

Newbery Medal winner Armstrong Sperry has such an affinity for life on the high seas that his readers will imagine themselves right beside the bold John Paul Jones, luring enemy craft into danger and engaging them in close combat. Jones, a talented young captain, became an invaluable figure in America's fight for independence when he offered his sailing skills to the Continental Navy.

YALSA Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Based on a true story, this novel tells the heartwrenching story of a girl in the midst of civil war in Guatemala. In her remote Guatemalan village, 14-year-old Gabriela is known as Tree Girl for her habit of fleeing to the forest and climbing high to...

Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of pills was beginning to make sense. For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, trying to outrun the memories that haunt them both. They moved back to Andy’s hometown to try a “normal” life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.

New York City, uptown, Harlem. In the 1920s it was the most exciting place in the world. Poets, writers, dancers, and musicians all came together and invented a new American culture - a dazzling and revolutionary African American culture of music and poetry and art. Everyone who was anyone wanted to come to Harlem and hear the music of jazz genius Duke Ellington, the rap-like stylings of Langston Hughes, and the classical lyricism of Countee Cullen.

Here are the real events that inspired Gary Paulsen to write Brian Robeson’s story in Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian's Hunt: a stint as a volunteer emergency worker; the death that became the pilot’s death in Hatchet; plane crashes he’s seen; and his own near misses. He takes listeners on his first hunting trips, showing the wonder and solace of nature along with his hilarious mishaps and mistakes. He shares special memories, such as the night he attracted every mosquito in the county, and how he met the moose who made it personal.

On August 18, 1920, American women finally won the right to vote. Ratification of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of an almost 80-year fight in which some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes broke the law in to achieve this huge leap toward equal rights. In this expansive yet personal volume, author Winifred Conkling covers not only the suffragists' achievements and politics but also the private journeys that fueled their passion and led them to become women's champions.

Through the alternating voices of 12-year-old Morning Girl and her younger brother Star Boy, we step into the extraordinarily rich lives of an indigenous family on a Bahamian Island in 1492, just as their paradise is about to be discovered and a new world order begins to take shape.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

This contemporary classic explores the role of boys who fought in the Civil War. No listener's vision of America’s most brutal and bloody war will be the same after listening to this audiobook.

In a plain meetinghouse a woman stands before her judges. The accused is a poor, unpopular woman who had her first child before she was married. As the trial proceeds the girls begin to wail, tear their clothing, and scream that the woman is hurting them. Are they acting or are they really tormented by an unseen evil? Whatever the cause, the nightmare has begun. The witch trials will eventually claim 25 lives, shatter the community, and forever shape the American social conscience

On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the white beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

La historia verídica de una niña norteamericana de 12 años y un niño de Zimbabwe, a los que una carta les cambió sus vidas para siempre. Comenzó como una tarea escolar. Todos en la clase de Caitlin escribieron a un estudiante desconocido en algún lugar lejano. Martín tuvo suerte de...

中华上下五千年是一套专为少年创作的简明中国通史。本有声书讲述了上至传说中的三皇五帝，下至新中国建立近五千年的中国历史。…… 中華上下五千年是一套專為少年創作的簡明中國通史。本有聲書講述了上至傳說中的三皇五帝，下至新中國建立近五千年的中國歷史。

From Martha Brockenbrough, award winning author of The Game of Love and Death, comes an intimate new YA audiobook focusing on the private life of Alexander Hamilton. Complex, passionate, brilliant, flawed—America's favorite Founding Father comes alive in this exciting biography. He was born...

From Colleen Houck, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Curse, comes the third and final book in the Reawakened series in which Lily will train to defeat evil once and for all and find a way to her everlasting love. After surviving her otherworldly adventure, Lily wakes...

Prince Alexander's mind has been touched by an incomprehensible evil, even as his betrothed travels from afar to unite their kingdoms against a terrible darkness that threatens both realms: the Spirit Eaters. From the distant shores of Illyria to a small deserted island, the deadly consequences of Smoke Blood magic loom, and lost civilizations emerge to reveal the existence of a weapon that may do the impossible - kill the last living god.

Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.

Both harrowing and life-affirming, the final novel from Carnegie Medal-winning author Mal Peet is the sweeping coming-of-age adventure of a mixed race boy transported to North America. Born from a street liaison between a poor young woman and an African soldier in the 1900s, Beck is soon orphaned and sent to the Catholic Brothers in Canada. Shipped to work on a farm, his escape takes him across the continent in a search for belonging.

Two-time Newbery Medal winner Gary Schmidt talks about the frequently comic mishaps and adventures of a 12-year-old Long Island boy in the Vietnam era. Actor Khris Lewin performs an excerpt from the book. Thalia Kids' Book Club events are lively talks between children's book authors and their fans (ages 9-12) plus one event for teens. Each event includes a creative writing project, a free-wheeling discussion with the audience, and a book signing. Sometimes an actor stops by to read from the book.