Books in How'd They Do That series

If you grew up in colonial America, making your bed would mean more than just tucking in the sheets and pulling up the spread. You d have to gather hay to stuff a straw-tick mattress and pluck a goose for a cozy down quilt. Colonial kids whittled pegs, spun thread, churned butter, and even cooked up their own soap in big iron kettles. Between chores, they learned the alphabet from hornbooks they wore around their necks. Yet no matter how hard they worked, they still had time for a game of blindman s bluff or king of the hill. How did they do all this? Maybe they took a tip from the mysterious Poor Richard, who said, Have you something to do tomorrow? Do it today. Meet Hopewell of Bayberry Cove and many other children of the American colonies. (And find out who Poor Richard really was!)

Did you know the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia? Thousands of years ago in the area of Asia called The Fertile Crescent, people who had been nomadic hunters and gatherers settled in Mesopotomia and began to create some of the first civilizations. Before long, Mesopotamian farming villages grew into the world s first cities, where large buildings were built, beautiful art was created, and the first system of writing was developed, leading to the earliest literature known. Mesopotamians even had modern things that are hard to imagine people having thousands of years ago. They cooked gourmet meals using all kinds of ingredients and cooking techniques. They even had toilets that flushed! Step back into the world of the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, and learn how many of their inventions and discoveries are still used by people all over the world today.

What was it about Persia s leadership and military that compelled powerful civilizations like Greece and Rome to fear and respect the might of the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen? The Persian Empire dictated administrative, economic, and artistic trends on an international level for a thousand years. Its people respected diversity and practiced one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. But who were these people, really, who gave us the famous Persian carpet and taught us landscape gardening, polo, and wine making? Why do people today who can trace their lineage and traditions back to this remarkable empire still proudly celebrate festivals like Nowruz regardless of their nationality or religion? Discover this and more as you journey back in time over 2,000 years to experience life in the Persian Empire and meet the people who called this great empire home.

How did people do ordinary things in ancient Rome? Follow a soldier on the battlefield to see how the Roman army beat Hannibal and his elephants. After those wars, Rome grew from a hut village to a great city of a million people that included 400,000 slaves. Keeping all those people working, fed, and entertained wasn t easy. Discover how Romans bathed, shopped, and constructed great buildings that still stand. See what they ate, what types of houses they lived in, what their families were like, and why fathers decided whom their children married. Find out what it was like to be a gladiator and how to win chariot races. And although people often dumped their garbage into the streets, find out the great advances Romans made in building roads and aqueducts.

What was life like in ancient Egypt? Did everyone spend their lives building pyramids and writing mysterious symbols on stone walls? Not exactly! Egyptian families had much more to do than that. Some women had jobs being professional weepers! Dinners were often cooked on the roof, and everyone kept a close eye on whether the water in the Nile was going up or down. Travel back in time and find out what it was like to work for a pharaoh, how long kids went before they had to wear clothes, and other fascinating details about this period in history.

If you were a boy growing up in pre-Columbian America, you would learn how to hunt, grow crops, or fish for your dinner. If you were a girl, you d learn how to skin animals and use the hides to make clothing, or twist the fibers of plants to make yarn. You might also be a builder taking bark and sewing it to saplings to make a shelter called a wigwam. Even though you wouldn t go to school, you d learn everything you needed to know to become a happy and healthy member of society. Older members of the clan would teach you. Find out how the many cultures across the land, from the Thules and the Iroquois to the people of the Great Plains, lived, loved, and celebrated life in the Americas before European settlement.

Ancient Greece was a civilization that still fascinates us today. It was a world of gods and goddesses, of fabulous pageantry and splendor, and of beauty and grace. Even though it existed thousands of years ago, ancient Greece is very much alive for us right now. People still read the story of Odysseus and his long journey home, study Greek society because it was the birthplace of democracy, and even visit Greece itself to walk among the ruins of once-glorious buildings like the Parthenon. What was it like to live in ancient Greece? What was it like to be a boy or girl there? What did they eat? How did they dress? Where did they live? The answers to these questions might surprise you!