Nonfiction

Nonfiction genre

The Amazing Travels of Ibn Battuta

In 1325, when Ibn Battuta was just 21, he bid farewell to his parents in Tangier, Morocco, and embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was 30 years before he returned home, having seen much of the world. In this book he recalls his amazing journey and the fascinating people, cultures, and places he encountered. He traveled extensively, throughout Islamic lands and beyond — from the Middle East to Africa to Europe to Asia. Ibn Battuta kept a diary of his travels, and even though he lost it many times and had to recall and rewrite what he had seen, he kept a remarkable record of his years away. His meticulous observations, retold here by Fatima Sharafeddine and beautifully illustrated by Intelaq Mohammed Ali, give us a remarkable picture of what it was like to be a traveler nearly 700 years ago.

Why Do We Fight? :

Battles, protests, standoffs, strikes. We hear about them all the time. On the surface, a battle and a protest don’t seem to have much in common, but they’re really just two ways of handling a dispute. One uses violence, the other uses signs and picket lines. But both start as a disagreement between two groups of people. Both are conflicts. Since it’s impossible for people to agree on everything all the time, conflicts naturally pop up every day, all over the world. Sometimes they turn into full-blown wars, which can be a lot trickier to understand than the conflicts that pop up in everyday life, but every conflict has some things in common. Using real world examples, Why Do We Fight? teaches kids to recognize the structures, factors, and complex histories that go into creating conflicts, whether personal or global as well as the similarities between both. They’ll be given tools to seek out information, enabling them to make informed opinions while learning to respect that others may form different ones.

Chitchat

This guide to language takes readers on a trip of the tongue, exploring how languages — spoken, written and sign — originate and change over time.

Chasing Cheetahs

Since the year 1900, cheetah footprints quickly dwindled in African dirt as the species plummeted from more than 100,000 to fewer than 10,000. At the Cheetah Conservation Fund’s (CCF) African headquarters in Namibia, Laurie Marker and her team save these stunning, swift, and slender creatures from extinction. Since the organization’s start in 1990, they’ve rescued more than 900 cheetahs, most of whom have been returned to the wild.

Little Pear Tree

Watch a tiny seed grow through the seasons into a fine pear tree with this beautifully-presented book.

Jasper’s Story

Jasper is a moon bear who was held in a cage by bear farmers in rural China. The farmers extracted the bile from Jasper’s body and sold it to be used in traditional medicines. Despite how badly he was treated, Jasper was able to slowly recover, forgive, and trust humans. With each new bear who arrives in the sanctuary, Jasper becomes a friend, letting them know that they are in a place where healing will begin.

D-Day

D-Day captures the events and the spirit of that day—June 6, 1944—the day that led to the liberation of western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. They came by sea and by sky to reclaim freedom from the occupying Germans, turning the tide of World War II.

Shaping Up Summer

As young readers journey into the natural world, they discover that numbers, patterns, shapes, and much more! These can be found in everyday plants and animals. In Shaping Up Summer, the final title in the Math in Nature series, nature comes to life to help children grasp concepts of geometry, symmetry, and spatial sense.