Books in Great Explorers Series series

Titles in the Visual Explorers series feature page after page of dramatic, full-color photographs. Inside, kids can get up-close and personal with dangerous animals, natural wonders, ocean life, and the mysteries of the rainforest. In Ocean Life, engaging text, detailed facts, and impressive statistics give children exciting scientific insight into amazing life forms, some that look more alien than anything else. A glossary at the end of each book helps reinforce the information. Parents, teachers, and librarians will want to collect all of the books in this series to create a very cool first encyclopedia to build early research skills. (Ages 8 and up)

Learn about different types of rock, how crystals are formed, where gems can be found in the earth's crust, and more. Engaging text, detailed facts, and impressive statistics give children exciting scientific insight into the rocks, crystals, and gems…and the world around them. A glossary at the end of the book helps reinforce the information. Parents, teachers, and librarians will want to collect all of the books in this series to create a very cool first encyclopedia to build early research skills.

To say that Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle was determined is like saying the sun is warm. La Salle made his way from Eastern Canada to the Great Lakes. Then he traveled by canoe down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. This vast territory was dense unexplored wilderness, controlled by the fierce and powerful Iroquois. To make the merely daunting nearly impossible, La Salle was on his own. His King, Louis X1V, would provide neither protection, men nor money. Through one setback after another, La Salle kept on going. His men deserted him; he walked a thousand miles, in the middle of the brutal Canadian winter, back to Montreal and organized a new expedition. The Iroquois threatened; he brought together rival tribes, and speaking in their own language, united them into an alliance against the Iroquois. La Salle's ship sunk with a fortune in furs meant to finance his expedition. Again, he walked back to Montreal and found new financial support. Part adventure, part biography, Despite All Obstacles is the fascinating story of this obstinate and courageous man who had dreams as large as the continent and a will to match those dreams.

Dramatic, full-color photographs take children on a visual exploration unlike all others!The books in the Visual Explorers reference series feature page after page of incredible photographs that will engage, inspire, and enlighten young readers. Inside the pages of Birds of Prey, kids can get an up-close look at falcons, ospreys, eagles, hawks, and more. They'll also discover which skills, senses, and tools these creatures have, how they hunt, and what life is like for these extraordinary birds. Engaging text, detailed facts, and impressive statistics give children exciting scientific insight into the world around them and the universe beyond. A glossary at the end of each book helps reinforce the information. Parents, teachers, and librarians will want to collect all of the books in this series to create a very cool first encyclopedia.

The explorer who discovered his own humanity. In 1528, the conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca escaped a hostile reception in Florida only to be shipwrecked off the coast of Texas. For the next eight years, he lived among the native tribes of the Southwest while he journeyed towards the safety of the Spanish settlements in Mexico. He and three companions survived starvation, sickness and slavery thanks to the generosity of native peoples along the way. When Cabeza de Vaca finally reached the Spanish, he was a changed man and led the struggle against the feudal-like exploitation of the New World populations. Stuart Waldman tells the fascinating story of two journeys: one covering 2,500 miles through unexplored territory, the other the transformation of a man's heart. Excerpts from Cabeza de Vaca's journals make the reader's immersion into this mystifying world complete. The gatefold map allows the reader to follow the journey while reading.

There's a great big world out there, and young children will love exploring different aspects of it with this fun series of board books. There are bright, engaging illustrations to see, flaps to lift, fun questions to answer, and charming adventures to discover. Children will laugh and learn as they meet lots of interesting creatures as they journey to the beach or explore the garden. In Little Lion in the Garden, baby can help Little Lion water the flowers, play on the swing, pull carrots from the ground for dinner, find butterflies, and more.

The first voyage around the globe was a daring, high-stakes gamble that changed the world forever. Portugal dominated the wildly lucrative spice trade, and Spain was desperate for a piece of the action. Spain had everything to gain. Portuguese officer Ferdinand Magellan had nothing to lose. His decades fighting for Portugal had left him with a crippled knee and his king's withering scorn. And so Magellan left Portugal to lead an expedition for his country's bitter rival, Spain. He knew it would be an exceedingly dangerous voyage, but the reality proved much worse. Killer storms, mutinies, deadly battles, murders, deprivation and disease dogged the four-year journey. Magellan was driven to ever-greater extremes of brilliance, courage, brutality and madness as he sailed around the world. Magellan's World is the story of a harrowing adventure, an inspiring and flawed hero, and an epic event in the history of the world.

Five years after Columbus sailed off to find a sea route to the Orient, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama went on the same quest. His epic, 27,000 mile journey around the bottom of Africa was filled with danger, treachery, sacrifice, cruelty and acts of extraordinary courage. By the time da Gama returned, half his ships were gone, and two thirds of his crew were dead, but he had found what Columbus had not. Da Gama brought back tales of East African and Asian marketplaces overflowing with riches, of rulers who wore emeralds and rubies and pearls the size of grapes, of ships and cannons that were no match for those of the Portuguese. Portugal would soon send more ships and more cannons. The rest of Europe would follow. And the world would never be the same. Joan Elizabeth Goodman's narrative captures both the drama of da Gama's voyage and its central place in world history. Tom McNeely's fluid watercolors give the reader a visceral sense of an unknown world unfolding before the explorer's eyes.

The one-armed professor who conquered the mighty Colorado. No European had ever taken boats down the Colorado river and come out alive. In May 1869, ten men boarded four rowboats in Green River City, Wyoming. Three months and 1,000 miles later, just two battered boats carrying six exhausted and starving men emerged from the depths of the Grand Canyon. The Last River tells their remarkable story. The man who challenged the Colorado was different from other explorers. Major John Wesley Powell was a small, bookish, one-armed geology professor from a midwestern farm. Despite his size and the constant pain from the Civil War wound that had cost him his arm, Powell's twin passions -- adventure and scientific exploration -- drew him to the Colorado River. For three months he and nine crew members made their home on the river. They thrilled to riding the rapids and endured the back-breaking labor of transporting boats and cargo past rapids too dangerous to run. They discovered canyons of unsurpassed beauty and gave them names like Music Temple and Canyon of Lodore. They saved each other from drowning, and suffered together as their food supply dwindled to nearly nothing. Excerpts from journals of crew members personalize the gripping text. Original paintings and a fold-out map allows the reader to simultaneously follow the expedition's route and its adventures. The Last River is an inspiring and riveting true adventure written with drama and compassion that brings history to life.