From an early age, Noah Webster was an odd fellow who liked to talk big and loved learning. He thought America needed its own national language and knew he was just the man to create it. He started with a speller, including everyday words like "scab," "grub," and "mop," and moved on to create a small dictionary. He rode around on a horse, selling his books by hand. Then Noah decided to compile a complete and comprehensive dictionary of American English. He thought the book would take him f...

Ellen Prentiss's papa said she was born with saltwater in her veins, so he gave her sailing lessons and taught her how to navigate. As soon as she met a man who loved sailing like she did, she married him. When her husband was given command of a clipper ship custom-made to travel quickly, she knew that they would need every bit of its speed for their maiden voyage: out of New York City, down around the tip of Cape Horn, and into San Francisco, where the Gold Rush was well under way. In a t...

"Wild Horse Annie" was the nickname of Velma Bronn Johnston (1912–77), who loved mustangs all her life. When she saw mustangs being rounded up and killed to make room for ranchers' livestock, she knew she had to speak up. In 1950, she began writing letters to local newspapers and politicians, defending the horses' right to roam free.Many people told Annie to hush up, but they couldn't stop her. She soon became a voice for mustangs throughout the state of Nevada, speaking on their b...

A captivating picture book biography about Howard Carter, the discoverer of King Tut's tomb in 1922.Howard Carter was obsessed with mummies. He met his first when he was a boy in England and lived near a mansion filled with Egyptian artifacts. Howard dreamed of discovering a mummy himself—especially a royal mummy in its tomb, complete with all its treasures. When he was seventeen, he took a job with the Egypt Exploration Fund and was sent to Egypt to learn about ar...

Barnum Brown's (1873-1963) parents named him after the circus icon P.T. Barnum, hoping that he would do something extraordinary--and he did! As a paleonotologist for the American Museum of Natural History, he discovered the first documented skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, as well as most of the other dinosaurs on display there today.An appealing and fun picture book biography, with zany and stunning illustrations by Boris Kulikov, BARNUM'S BONES captures the spirit of this remar...

In 1926, Trudy Ederle became the first woman and the fastest person to swim the English Channel.