Kraske, Robert

Challenges readers to figure out and, at the end, reveals how Houdini, Harry Kellar, Chung Ling Soo, and other famous magicians performed their baffling tricks.

The stories behind the writing of six patriotic American songs: "Yankee Doodle, " "The Star-Spangled Banner, " "America, " "Dixie, " "America the Beautiful, " and "God Bless America.".

Recounts the planning, building, and transporting of the gigantic statue that was France's gift to the United States.

A collection of true stories about notes found in bottles that were put into the ocean.

Relates the events which led Benedict Arnold to become America's first traitor emphasizing his skill as an American general and his secret dealings with the British.

An introduction to the life of Mae Jemison, the engineer and doctor who became the first African-American woman to fly on the space shuttle.

During a Caribbean vacation, Colton, inserts a message and a voyager's stone into a bottle and hurls it into the sea. The bottle drifts through currents in the Atlantic, Arctic, Antarctic, and Indian Oceans, meeting the inhabitants of the seas, until it is found by an Australian girl named Coleen.

Traces the history of the dictionary and describes what goes into the compilation of this second most popular book in the English language.

Zooming in from space, asteroids have struck the earth in the past and will do so again in the future. How astronomers search near space for these "flying rocks" and devise ways to avoid an impact that, in a worst-case scenario, could eliminate civilization.

Presents the story of Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk and his experiences marooned on a South Pacific island for four years.