Elephants and Golden Thrones: Inside China's Forbidden City

Photographer: Ellen B. Senisi
Publisher: Abram Books for Young Readers
Book Description: Emperor Zhengde had spent thousands of silver coins on the Feast of the Lanterns, the final New Year’s celebration. He looked around him, dizzy with pride. Surely, no emperor before him had done so much to celebrate the New Year. He had built a seven-story pagoda and draped it with thousands of candles and tiny lanterns, making it look as if it were a fiery constellation floating in the heavens. Hundreds more lanterns danced on the trees…He was certain he would be  remembered as the more generous, the most loved, the richest emperor China had ever had. And now he gazed down from the Golden Throne, craving more…Was an evil spirit from the Gobi desert watching Zhengde? A sudden windstorm swept in from the north. A candle turned into a torch, flames landing on the ladies’ brilliant silk gowns…The guards ran, the musicians ran, the guests ran. The Palace of Cloudless Heaven burned, burned to the ground that night.”

For over five hundred years, starting in 1407, emperors ruled the vast empire of China from the Forbidden City. Few were allowed inside the massive walls, but it was said that “all the riches in the world” were there, including a towering golden throne. Come and be a guest in the Forbidden City. Meet the fascinating emperors who lived there, and find out some of their many secrets.

Steel Drumming at the Apollo, The Road to Super Top Dog

Photographer: Ellen B. Senisi
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Coming in 2008!
Book Description: “Sometimes I get nervous. I won’t know the right words to say to my friends or to people who don’t know me, so I’ll let them hear my music. I rap to inspire people to live better and for them to know there is nothing impossible to grab. All we have to do is reach. It is really easy for me to tell them through my music.” Ahmel Williams

Ahmel, Aaron, Spencer, Dayshawn, Andre, Steven, Dha’sean – seven friends, seven remarkable musicians, came together for the journey of a lifetime.  In January, 2005, talent scouts from the world famous Apollo Theater arrived in Schenectady, New York, the boys’ hometown. After beating out the competition there, the band went on to New York City to battle the best amateur acts in the country in front of the boisterous Apollo Amateur Night audiences. The competition got tougher, but the boys ignited the crowds into thunderous approval time after time. By December, they had made it to the final fact-off, the Super Top Dog show. Could the band now drum their way to the top?

“The Apollo experience was really all we needed. As far as everything else, we’re all going to make it, every one of us.” Dha’sean Serrano

Everglades Forever: Restoring America's Great Wetland

Photographer: Cindy Karp
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Book Description: Everglades Forever takes you on an exciting trip through the Everglades, an area unique in the world, an eco-system that is really "a wide, slow-moving river," filled with plants and animal life found nowhere else on Earth. Your fellow travelers are students from a school perched on the eastern edge of this environment. With their teacher, the amazing Ms. Stone, fifth-graders Robert, Tiler, Vedantee and Conrado explore the backwaters of the Everglades, the Miccosukee nation ( a self-governing nation within the Everglades), and have some face-to-face contact with alligators and other Everglades’ creatures.

Jeannette Rankin: First Lady of Congress

Illustrator: Dan Andreasen
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Book Description: Would you have the courage to stand up for your beliefs, even if no one agreed with you?
Jeannette Rankin did. Born to a Montana rancher and his schoolteacher wife, Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, in 1916. (She was elected by the men of Montana as woman did not yet have the vote.) The first week on the job, she had to vote on whether the United States should enter World War! Rankin voted no. This unpopular stand ended her political career for a time…
In 1940, she was again elected to the House of Representatives. This time she had to vote on whether the United States should enter World War II. Rankin alone voted no, becoming the only member to oppose U.S. entry into both world wars.
People were really mad at Rankin, but President John F. Kennedy later said of her: “Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.”
(Exerpted from the Washington Post – Book of the Week)

One Boy from Kosovo

Photographer: Cindy Karp
Publisher: Harper Collins
Book Description: When war drove twelve-year-old Edi and his family from their home in Kosovo, they fled across the Macedonian border to the Brazda refugee camp, a tent city that housed almost thirty thousand people. There the family shared a tent with more than twenty other people, with no kitchen, no running water, and no school for Edi to attend. Instead he helped out with the younger kids, played soccer with the other boys, and ran errands, such as waiting in the long lines for food and fresh water. Everybody was waiting in Brazda -- for news about relatives, for the war to end, for the day when they could finally go home again.

I Heal, The Children of Chernobyl in Cuba

Co-Author: Dorita Beh-Eger
Photographer: Cindy Karp
Publisher: Lerner Publications Company
Book Description: Elena Balushko was only two years old on April 26, 1986, so she doesn’t remember the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. But on that day, one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine exploded, sending thousands of tons of radioactive powder into the atmosphere. The Chernobyl accident was the worst nuclear disaster in history.
When Elena was nine years old, a tumor started to grow behind her eye. Elena’s mother took her to many doctors in Kiev, but they all said the same thing – Elena needed an operation right away, but there was no room in the Kiev hospitals. That was when Elena and her mother heard about Tarara, Cuba.
This is the story of the more than 13,000 children of Chernobyl who have been treated in Cuba, as told through the eyes of Elena and her friends.
“My mama says that here in Tarara more than my tumor has been healed,” said Elena. “She said that here in Tarara my spirit has been healed, too.”

Reaching for the Sun, Kids in Cuba

Photographer: Cindy Karp
Publisher: The Millbrook Press
Book Description: “Cuba, at last!” Twelve-year-old Angie had been waiting months to see Cuba.
When Angie left Los Angelos with a group of kids for a trip to Cuba, everyone knew they were going someplace different. But none of them knew much about Cuba, or the kids there were to spend the summer with, writing and performing in a play. What they discovered – about Cuba, the Cuban kids, and themselves – is that there are things we all have in common , and there are ways to get along, and that if we open our eyes and our hearts we can be changed forever.