Call It Courage

Mafatu has been afraid of the sea for as long as he can remember. Though his father is the Great Chief of Hikueru – an island whose seafaring people worship courage – Mafatu feels like an outsider. All his life he has been teased, taunted, and even blamed for storms on the sea.

Then at age fifteen, no longer willing to put up with the ridicule and jibes, Mafatu decides to take his fate into his own hands. With his dog, Uri, as his companion, Mafatu paddles out to sea, ready to face his fears. What he learns on his lonesome adventure will change him forever and make him a hero in the eyes of his people.

Sacred Mountain: Everest

A cultural, geological, and ecological history of Mount Everest focusing on the indigenous Sherpa and their spiritual connection to the mountain, record-setting multinational climbing expeditions, and the effects of tourism on the environment. Illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams, and timelines.

Chee-Lin: A Giraffe’s Journey

Eighty years before Columbus, China sent ships to explore the world. The Chinese discovered many marvelous things, but one discovery stood out above the others: the chee-lin. This chee-lin was just a giraffe, but to the Chinese it was an omen of good fortune so rare that it had appeared only once before—at the birth of Confucius. In a storybook in which each page evokes the richness of far away places and long-ago days, James Rumford traces the chee-lin’s journey from Africa to Bengal to China, weaving a tale not just of a giraffe but of the people he meets along the way.

Marco Polo

Marco Polo’s adventures as he travels from Venice to Beijing.

The Sea Singer

Craig Moodie’s adventure novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Finn, who stows away to search for his lost father and brothers. It’s a journey that brings storms, shipwreck, tense encounters with the inhabitants of an unexplored continent — and a coming of age for Finn, who will in the end, face his father as a young man and a Viking.