In March of 1887, Rocco, an eleven-year-old from an Italian village, arrives in New York CIty where he is forced to live in squalor and beg for money as a street musician, but he finds the city's cruelty to children and animals intolerable and sets out to make things better, whatever the cost to himself.

Tells the tale of the sinking of the Titanic using the narratives of the witnesses and survivors to the disaster.

"Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth's experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize...

"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 pioneer father transports his beloved fruit trees and his family to Oregon in the mid-nineteenth century. Based loosely on the life of Henderson Luelling.

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 Filipino prisoners of war were forced to endure the most horrific conditions on the deadly...

Narrates the tale of twelve-year-old Charles Dickens who, despite poverty and long hours of factory work, still has time to discover and share the stories of other residents of 1824 London. Includes author's note about Dickens' life and some of the bookshe wrote.

In the early 1900s, Alta Weiss, a young woman who knows from an early age that she loves baseball, finds a way that she can play, even though she is a girl.

When Mikey's father leaves to fight in World War I, he and his classmates join the Central Park Knitting Bee to help knit clothing for soldiers overseas.

On a beautiful day, some of Charles Darwin's many children help him study humblebees (bumblebees) in the garden at their home in the English countryside.