You know the Super Soaker. It's one of the top twenty toys of all time. And it was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, impressive inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love for rockets, robots, inventions, and a mind for creativity began early in Lonnie Johnson's life. Growing up in a house full of brothers and sisters, persistence and a...

Danza! is a celebration of Hernández's life and of the rich history of dance in Mexico. As a child, Amalia always thought she would grow up to be a teacher, until she saw a performance of dancers in her town square. She was fascinated by the way the dancers twirled and swayed, and she knew that someday she would be a dancer, too. She began to study many different types of dance, including ballet and modern, under some of the best teachers in the...

"Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with...

"In 1876, Lakota chief Crazy Horse helped lead his people's resistance against the white man's invasion of the northern Great Plains. One of the leaders of the US military forces was Army Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. The men had long been enemies. At the height of the war, when tribalism had reached its peak, they crossed paths for the last time. In this action-packed double biography, S. D. Nelson draws fascinating parallels between Crazy Horse...

Growing up in the late 19th century, Laura Wheeler Waring didn't see any artists who looked like her. She didn't see any paintings of people who looked like her, either. As a young woman studying art in Paris, she found inspiration in the works of Matisse and Gaugin to paint the people she knew best. Back in Philadelphia, the Harmon Foundation commissioned her to paint portraits of accomplished African-Americans. Her portraits still hang in Washington...

Learn who Amandla Stenberg is and what causes she takes a stand for.

Sequoyah created a way of writing the Cherokee language 200 years ago. Thanks to Sequoyah, the Cherokee today know more about their history and native language than almost any other tribe in North America.

Growing up in southern India, Srinivasa Ramanujan was fascinated by numbers: they made patterns only he could see. In 1914 he sailed to faraway England, longing to work with the acclaimed mathematician G.H. Hard. Cambridge University was so different from home, but Ramanujan's love of numbers kept him going. He had big questions to ask-and important discoveries to make! --

Did you know that Harriet Tubman helped runaway slaves escape to freedom? She took them to Canada. Find out more in Harriet Tubman, a Historical Heroes book.

"The true story of an intrepid young man, Ma Mon Luk, who leaves China for the Philippines, desperate to earn a living--and the approval of the parents of the woman he loves"--