In 1679, a French ship called the Griffon left Green Bay on Lake Michigan, bound for Niagara with a cargo of furs. Neither the Griffon nor the five-man crew was ever seen again. Though the Griffon’s fate remains a mystery, its disappearance was probably the result of the first shipwreck on a Great Lake.Since then, more than six thousand vessels, large and small, have met tragic ends on the Great Lakes. For many years, saltwater mariners scoffed at the fre...

From a true-life “Survivor Island” tale to the women who flew fighters and bombers for the Allies in World War II, Ed Butts invites you to meet twelve women who dared to live their lives on a tightrope. She Dared takes the reader to the Far North, where a single Native woman put an end to a ruinous war. There’s Molly Brant, who stepped out of the shadow of her famous brother Joseph to make her own mark, and Dr. “James Barry,” a prominent army physician whose true identity remained...

Everyone’s life is touched at some time by disaster. But some disasters loom so large they are international events. The stories of those who live through such devastating events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires, and floods are both heartbreaking and compelling. Often they are inspiring and uplifting.SOS: Stories of Survival tells the tales of young survivors of such disasters — teenage coal miners trapped deep below the surface of the earth in Spri...

When 12-year-old Teddy makes a plan to sneak away from the Remembrance Day ceremony, little does he know where his scheme will take him!Teddy really doesn’t want to go to the boring ceremony, especially when the comics store is hosting the biggest War Games competition that has ever come to town. But the day before the competition an old veteran gives him a special poppy that transports him to the mud-filled trenches of World War I. After a narrow escape he finds h...

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus, as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax. Back in the late 1800's, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine bi...

The #1 bestselling chapter book series of all time celebrates 25 years with new covers and a new, easy-to-use numbering system! Getting the facts behind the fiction has never looked better.Track the facts with Jack and Annie!When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in Magic Tree House #17: Tonight on the Titanic, they had lots of questions. How many people were aboard the Titanic? Why weren’t there enough lifeboats for all the passengers? How did t...

When James Marshall found a small, soft shiny stone in a California stream, he knew it could only be one thing: Gold! His cry of discovery would be heard around the world. In the third installment of Don Brown's Actual Times series, Gold! Gold from the American River! is the story of the California gold rush--the uncharted journey across hostile land, the laborious process of panning for gold, the success of savvy entrepreneurs, and the fortunes of the marginalized, from slaves and America...

Do you know how many miles beneath the surface of the waves the wreck of the titanic lies? What do scientists and historians now believe led to the iceberg only being seen at the last minute? The flares that were sent up by the crew were supposed to signal ‘distress’ - but what did they actually say? All these questions and more are answered in this fascinating eBook which contains over one hundred facts about the ship and her tragic maiden voyage.

?Michael Collins is one of the most famous figures in Irish history. He became the most wanted man in the British Empire, a minister in the first Irish government and Commander-in-Chief of the army. This is an action-packed biography of a great Irish hero.

During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty's name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an "Indian lover," Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight f...

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax Harbour. One ship was loaded top to bottom with munitions and one held relief supplies, both intended for wartorn Europe. The resulting blast flattened two towns, Halifax and Dartmouth, and killed nearly 2,000 people. As if that wasn't devastating enough, a blizzard hit the next day, dumping more than a foot of snow on the area and paralyzing much-needed relief efforts.Fascinating, edge-of-your-seat storytelling based on original so...

The New York Times bestselling and National Book Award winning In the Heart of the Sea, now a major motion picture directed by Ron Howard, adapted by the author for young readers.On November 20, 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry whale. Within minutes, the twenty-one-man crew, including the fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, found themselves stranded in three leaky boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean...