Library History

Horace Everett Hooper - a volatile, self-assured, impulsive, and optimistic American, an autodidact and natural-born salesman - got into the book business at age 16, moved to the Western frontier and on to Chicago, and became hugely successful. With a brilliant adman named Henry Haxton as his partner, he went about buying publishing rights to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work incredibly distinguished by entries from Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Sir Walter Scott, and more.

For more than one hundred years, people have been captivated by the disastrous sinking of the Titanic that claimed over 1,500 lives. Now young readers can find out why the great ship went down and how it was discovered seventy-five years later. At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the Royal Mail...

Precocious Katy Thatcher comes to realize what a gentle, silent boy did for his family. He meant to help, not harm. It didn’t turn out that way. “The author balances humor and generosity with the obstacles and injustice of Katy’s world to depict a complete picture of the turn of the 20th...

Travel to Renaissance Italy and learn about the young apprentice who went on become a true master, and one of the most beloved sculptors and painters of all time in this addition to the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series! Michelangelo created some of the world's most recognizable...

FOUR STARRED REVIEWS! Twelve-year old Lawrence is new to chess--can he find a way to get on the board, even though the odds are stacked against him? Find out in this powerful novel about family, forgiveness, and figuring out who you are when you don’t make the rules—just right for...

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson brings readers a powerful story that delves deeply into life’s burning questions about time and memory and what we take with us into the future. It seems like Sage’s whole world is on fire the summer before she starts seventh grade. As house...

The #1 bestselling chapter book series of all time celebrates 25 years with new covers and a new, easy-to-use numbering system! It is a dark and snowy night when the Magic Tree House whisks Jack and Annie back to colonial times. General George Washington is about to lead his army in a sneak...

Red Hugh was a true champion for Irish liberty from Queen Elizabeth's constricting reign in the late 1580's and beyond. Hugh's capture, imprisonment, and escape from the Dublin Castle; his triumph over a blizzard and frostbite; his dramatic rescue of his family's castle; his conflict with the evil Captain Leeds; and his inexhaustible love for Ireland make this a wonderful book for the entire family.

Myths! Lies! Secrets! Uncover the hidden truth about the Underground Railroad and Black Americans' struggle for freedom. Perfect for fans of I Survived! and Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales. Before the Civil War, there was a crack team of abolitionists who used quilts and signal lanterns to guide...

June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.

Steve Jobs, adopted in infancy by a family in San Francisco, packed a lot of life into fifty-six short years. In this Who Was…? biography, children will learn how his obsession with computers and technology at an early age led him to co-found and run Apple, in addition to turning Pixar into a...

Another powerful story in the Logan Family Saga and companion to Mildred D. Taylor's Newbery Award-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. With the depression bearing down on her family, there isn’t much that Cassie Logan can count on anymore. But there is one thing that hasn’t...

UNLIKE MOST VICTORIAN women, Sally is completely independent, with her own successful business and a comfortable home for her young daughter, Harriet. But Sally’s whole world is about to collapse. A stranger emerges, claiming to be both her husband and Harriet’s father and threatening all...

Josefina’s adventure continues in the second book in her series. When Josefina wants to rescue a newborn goat that needs help, Papá has doubts. But after a rattlesnake threatens the baby goat, Josefina discovers her healing skills—and her courage. She gets another chance to prove her...

From celebrity author Kevin Hart comes the laugh-out-loud sequel to Marcus Makes a Movie about a young boy who has big Hollywood dreams--and the hustle to make it happen. "Everybody, grab a ticket and run for a front row seat to Marcus Makes a Movie!" —Judd Winick, New York Times bestselling...

Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.

Thirteen-year-old Rosie Beckett has never strayed further from her family's farm than a horse can pull a cart. Then a letter from her Aunt Euterpe arrives, and everything changes. It's 1893, the year of the World's Columbian Exposition-the "wonder of the age"-a.k.a. the Chicago World's Fair...

When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters.

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming...

Eight-year-old J.D. turns a tragic home haircut into a thriving barber business in this hilarious new chapter book series J.D. has a big problem--it's the night before the start of third grade and his mom has just given him his first and worst home haircut. When the steady stream of insults from...