In 1909, a nine-month-old puppy, trained unsuccessfully to be a hunting dog, finds a way to earn his keep when disaster strikes in the coal mine where his boy works.

In 1957, problems at the mine threaten to ruin Christmas for fifth-grader Don, his family, and the rest of their Oklahoma coal town, but Don's bloodhound, Frank, is determined to do whatever it takes to make the holiday special for Don and his six-year-old sister, Susan. Alternate chapters are told from the human and canine points of view.

Text and photographs provide information about Battleship Island.

Coal is a natural resource millions of years in the making. Since over 40 percent of the world's electricity comes from burning coal, it remains an important, though sometimes controversial, energy source. The processes that transform organic remains into coal, coal mines, and the carbon cycle are important topics covered in this valuable volume. Readers will learn about the pollution attributed to the burning of coal as well as about coal alternatives....

Thirteen-year-old Trina's family left Bohemia for a Colorado coal town to earn money to buy a farm, but by 1901 she doubts that either hard work or hoping will be enough, even after a strange fish seems to grant her sisters' wishes.

Recounts photographer Lewis Hines' fight against child labor in the early 1900s and discusses how his work and the work of others revealed truths about the issue to the public.

Describes what life was like, especially for children, in coal mines and mining towns in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

While searching for his younger brother who has been "sold" to be trained as a chimney sweep in eighteenth-century London, thirteen-year-old Ned meets the itinerant preacher John Wesley whose message changes the lives of his entire family.

Tired of his twelve-hour shifts and facing danger daily, Bitty, a canary whose courage more than makes up for his small size, treks to the state capital to try to improve working conditions in coal mines.