Jim Murphy
Author
Pub. Date
1978
Description
A hair-cutting machine, a used gum receptacle, jumping shoes, and more of the strangest inventions ever!
A hat that can tip itself. A suitcase that turns into a bathtub. A pair of protective eyeglasses for chickens. These are just three of the hundreds of unusual inventions that people have dreamed up over the last two centuries. Some, such as the mustache guard, made perfect sense when they first appeared. Others were considered just plain silly....
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.2 - AR Pts: 6
Description
While traveling in 1883 with her Italian-American family (including a meddlesome little sister) and other immigrant pioneers to a utopian community in Idaho, fourteen-year-old Teresa keeps a diary of her experiences along the way.
Author
Pub. Date
[2015]
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 8.3 - AR Pts: 3
Description
"In 1944 a groundbreaking operation repaired the congenital heart defect known as blue baby syndrome. The operation's success brought the surgeon Alfred Blalock international fame and paved the way for open-heart surgery. But the technique had been painstakingly developed by Vivien Thomas, Blalocks African American lab assistant, who stood behind Blalock in the operating room to give him step-by-step instructions. The stories of this medical and...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9 - AR Pts: 6
Description
It's 1793, and there's an invisible killer roaming the streets of Philadelphia. The city's residents are fleeing in fear. This killer has a name -- yellow fever -- but everything else about it is a mystery. Its cause is unknown, and there is no cure. This powerful, dramatic account by award-winning author Jim Murphy traces the devastating course of the epidemic. The medical beliefs and practices of the time and the conditions that helped the disease...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.8 - AR Pts: 3
Description
Combines an account of Robert Louis Stevenson's experiences as he traveled from New York to California by train in 1879 and a description of the building and operation of railroads in nineteenth-century America. An account of Robert Louis Stevenson's twelve day journey from New York to California in 1879, interwoven with a history of the building of the transcontinental railroad and the settling of the West.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.6 - AR Pts: 2
Description
Describes the events of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 as seen through the eyes of two actual participants, nineteen-year-old Confederate lieutenant John Dooley and seventeen-year-old Union soldier Thomas Galway. Also discusses Lincoln's famous speech delivered at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.7 - AR Pts: 3
Description
Joseph Plumb Martin was only 15 in 1776 when he joined the revolutionary army in Milford Massachusetts. He spent the rest of his teen and young adult years marching, working, fighting, foraging and sometimes almost freezing and starving with his fellow patriots until the war ended in 1783. As an older man, he wrote and published his account of his wartime experiences, well known events as Washington and Lafayette and the winter at Valley Forge and...
19) Inside the Alamo
Author
Pub. Date
[2003]
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 8.5 - AR Pts: 5
Description
An overview of the struggle between the Texan settlers and Mexico's General Santa Anna for control of Texas, with a detailed description of the 1836 siege of the Alamo. Includes biographical sketches and quotations of some of those involved.