Science Geography

Is your child always asking questions about the world and wanting to learn more about it? Isn’t it amazing how quickly children learn when they’re younger? Their brains are like little sponges, absorbing all the information around them. Your heart swells with pride when they tell you something new and exciting that they’ve learned. Perhaps it’s the ability to recite the names of all the planets in our solar system, or maybe it’s being able to solve a complex math problem. Wherever their passions lie, our Trivia for Smart Kids will keep their curiosity growing.

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

In the ancient South Pacific world of Oceania, Moana, a born navigator, sets sail in search of a fabled island. During her incredible journey, she teams up with her hero, the legendary demi-god Maui, to traverse the open ocean on an action-packed voyage. They encounter enormous sea creatures, breathtaking underworlds, and ancient folklore.

Billy Chan was having the summer most twelve-year-olds dream about—bonding with his very own dragon. But Billy's friend Dylan has been kidnapped by the Dragon of Death, and the only way to save him is to travel through time with his friends and their dragons. Will Billy, Charlotte, Ling-Fei, and the dragons get to Dylan in time? And can they work together to stop the Dragon of Death from destroying the past?

In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet.

Famed inventor Henry "Hank" Witherspoon has gone missing, and it's up to Jack and his brilliant siblings, Ava and Matt, to find him. At Hank's ransacked lab, the siblings discover clues to the project he's been working on - a new way to generate and store electricity, inspired by the electric eels of the Amazon.

Tim Marshall's global best seller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed. But the world has. In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores 10 regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and space.

The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

This is a classic geography book for children by author and educator Virgil M. Hillyer.

Visit the Sunflower State! Learn about Kansas' history, geography, weather, people, and more in this book that's all about our 34th state.

In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.

Corinne LaMer defeated the wicked jumbie Severine months ago, but things haven't exactly gone back to normal in her Caribbean island home. Everyone knows Corinne is half-jumbie, and many of her neighbors treat her with mistrust. When local children begin to go missing, snatched from the beach and vanishing into wells, suspicious eyes turn to Corinne. To rescue the missing children and clear her own name, Corinne goes deep into the ocean to find Mama D'Leau, the dangerous jumbie who rules the sea.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson’s quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know.

Explore the Centennial State! Learn about Colorado's history, geography, weather, people, and more in this book that's all about our 38th state.

Liberty, my wisecracking horse, our old friends Cam, Tommy, Freedom, and I are off to meet some super-brave soldiers in the year 1775. Yep, that’s right. We’ll be visiting with the underdog heroes who fought for American independence, against all odds - and won! But not before eight very real years of danger and uncertainty. Be a part of Rush Revere’s crew as we rush, rush, rush into a time when British rule had become a royal pain, and rebellion was in the air.

When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the southeast United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea.

An essential audiobook for anyone interested in the interplay between geography and global politics, this fully revised edition of Prisoners of Geography offers a vivid look at the forces driving our increasingly complex world.

Marco Polo (1254-1324), is probably the most famous Westerner who traveled on the "Silk Road." His journey through Asia lasted 24 years. He traveled the whole of China and returned to tell the tale, which became one of the world's greatest travelogues.

Explore the Gem State! Learn about Idaho's history, geography, weather, people, and more in this book that's all about our 43rd state.