Books published by publisher Twenty-First Century Books (CT) (Oct. 2012)

Whether you call them kicks or sneakers, runners or gutties, you probably have a pair of athletic shoes in your closet. The earliest sneakers debuted in the 1800s and weren't much more than a canvas upper and a flexible sole made of a crazy new material—rubber. The stuff might have been new to Americans then, but for thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin of South America had been using latex made from the milky sap of hevea trees to protect their feet from rocks, sticks, and biting insects. Once Charles Goodyear figured out how to make the stuff more durable, sneakers were here to stay. Early sneakers were initially designed for elite athletes, but kids and teens quickly adopted them. Some of the first brands included Converse, Brooks, and Saucony. German companies Adidas and Puma started up during World War II. The Nike shoe debuted in the 1970s (with a bit of inspiration from a waffle iron). As fitness crazes took off in the 1980s, people all over the world started buying the shoes for workouts and everyday wear. At about the same time, companies began hiring high-profile athletes and pop stars for big-dollar endorsements, and shoe sales soared into the stratosphere to the tune of billions of dollars each year. In Sneaker Century, follow sneaker fashions and the larger-than-life personalities behind the best known athletic shoe brands in history. Learn how teen sneakerheads became important style makers and drove the success of NIKE, Inc., and other shoe companies. Look behind the scenes at the labor-intensive process of manufacturing sneakers. Explore the sneaker frontier of the future—recycled shoes, earth-friendly initiatives, and high-fashion statements. Get ready to speed through the Sneaker Century!

A rapper spits rhymes into a microphone. A DJ scratches a record back and forth against a turntable needle. Fans' feet stomp along to a stiff beat. These are the sounds of hip-hop. Hip-hop music busted out of New York City in the 1970s. Many young African Americans found their voices after stepping up to the mic. In the decades afterward, rappers and DJs took over the airwaves and transformed American music. In the twenty-first century, hip-hop is a global sensation. Learn what inspired hip-hop's earliest rappers to start rhyming over beats, as well as the stories behind hip-hop legends such as Run-D.M.C., 2Pac, Lauryn Hill, and Jay-Z. Follow the creativity and the rivalries that have fueled everything from party raps to songs about social struggles. And find out how you can add your own sounds to the mix!

In 2015, the world watched as soccer star Abby Wambach kissed her wife after the US women's World Cup victory. Milwaukee Brewers' minor league first baseman David Denson came out as gay. And Caitlyn (born Bruce) Jenner, an Olympic decathlete, came out as transgender. It hasn't always been this way. Many great athletes have stayed in the closet their whole lives, or at least until retirement. Social attitudes, institutional policies, and laws are slow to change, but they are catching up. Together, athletes, families, educators, allies, and fans are pushing for competitive equity so that every athlete, regardless of identity, can have the opportunity to play at their very best.

When you think of smart animals, what comes to mind? Wise old owls? Problem-solving dolphins? Maybe you have heard of Koko the gorilla, who has mastered one thousand signs in American Sign Language, or Chaser the border collie, who recognizes one thousand names for her stuffed toys. But what about ants building megacolonies or bees reporting to the hive about new nesting sites? What about escape artist octopuses and jellyfish that use their eyes (they have twenty-four!) to navigate? Are insects, spiders, and other animals without backbones considered smart, too? When we think of intelligent creatures, we often think of vertebrates, or animals with spinal columns and relatively large brains. We don't usually think of invertebrates, or animals without a spine. But invertebrates can be astonishingly intelligent. These animals exhibit surprising feats of learning, memory, and problem-solving using their relatively simple, tiny brains―some the size of a sesame seed or even smaller. In fact, some intelligent invertebrates have no brain at all! Scientists around the world are putting invertebrate intelligence to use in mind-boggling ways. Engineers are designing swarmbots based on bees to take part in search-and-rescue efforts. And materials scientists are basing a new, tough ceramic on the structure of a mantis shrimp's claw. In Smart and Spineless, readers will be challenged to think in a whole new way about what it means to be smart!

According to a UN tally, more than 1 million people fled violence and persecution in 2015. Of these, more than half were children. Thousands died along the way. The Syrian civil war as well as armed conflicts in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Central African Republic contributed to the continuing exodus of people into Europe and North America. Learn more about these modern mass exoduses, what is fueling them in the 21st century, how nations are addressing the crises, how refugees contribute to and strain communities, and what kinds of solutions could help. Along the way, you'll meet actual refugees and the people who are trying to help.

What can communicate but has no mouth, and can attack but has no hands? A plant! You might love the beauty and fragrance of flowers, but plants are far more complex than meets the eye. Some plants have ways of luring insects for pollination. Others mimic the look of the female insects whose male counterparts they want to attract. The Venus flytrap eats insects and other small animals for extra nourishment. You might see some of these ninja plants—with their sneaky and deceitful ways—in your own backyard. These plants might even be sitting on a windowsill in your home. This fascinating world of ninja plants is waiting to be discovered.

"Trafficking thrives in the shadows. And it can be easy to dismiss it as something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But that is not the case. Trafficking is a crime that involves every nation on earth, and that includes our own."―US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2009 Human trafficking is as old as slavery and continues to be practiced in the modern world. Victims of human traffickers include workers in restaurants and in garment factories, maids and nannies in the homes of wealthy families, child sex workers, beggars on the street, boy soldiers, even infants kidnapped for foreign adoptions. Women and children are more likely to be coerced or seized than men and boys, especially if they are poor and uneducated. Traffickers sell their victims for their bodies or for their labor and reap an enormous profit. Human trafficking is estimated to be a $30 to $45 billion industry on an annual basis, rivaling weapons and drug trafficking as one of the most profitable criminal undertakings in the world. Up for Sale takes a hard look at human trafficking, identifying perpetrators and telling the stories of victims through their own words. You'll discover why some people become vulnerable to trafficking and you'll read about what their lives are like on a daily basis. You'll also meet some of the courageous individuals and organizations working to free people from lives in bondage so that, in the words of US president Barack Obama, each person can "forge a life equal to [their] talents and worthy of [their] dreams."