And after naming a piece- the final step in shaping her artwork- Maya Lin, the artist-architect, is ready to dream, think again, and create something new.

I loved these illustrations! They were simple yet beautiful and easy to look at.

This book tells you about Maya Lin and how she loved to study the spaces around her. She explored everything and anything and used her house as a model to build tiny towns out of paper and scraps. Maya grew up with art and learned to think with her hands as well as her mind. This book tells the story of an inspiring American artist, the architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Peter was suddenly a popular author. But this did not change him at all. Instead, he went right back to his desk and made new lists...so that today, whenever you need it, you can still find the right word.

I loved the illustrations in this book, they have a lot of detail in every picture and are very creative and colorful.

This book is about Peter Mark Roget and how he began to write his own book. He did not write stories, he wrote lists. He found his love for words and turned it to organizing ideas and finding exactly the right word to express just what he thought. His lists grew and grew, eventually turning into one of the most important reference books of all time, the thesaurus.

Willie took out his pen and his notes. He sat down and looked at the words...and shaped them into poems.

I enjoyed the illustrations in this book, it was almost like a collage of pictures. I thought it was very fun and creative.

This book is about William Carlos Williams and how he wrote his poems. His words gave him freedom and peace but he also knew he needed to earn money to live. So he went to medical school and became a doctor but never stopped writing poetry.

The stars made the ingredients of life. Could those ingredients have resulted in life elsewhere too?

I loved the illustrations in this book, how some of the pages had flaps, and how some of the pictures almost looked like a comic book drawing. This makes the book fun to read.

This book is about a boy, Carl Sagan, who went to the 1939 World's Fair. From there on out, he never stopped marveling at the universe and seeking to understand it better. This book follows Carl from his days star gazing from his bedroom window through his love of science fiction novels. He was the man who brought the mystery of the cosmos into homes across America.

And when women from her own village came, lamenting that the water in her stream was too dirty to drink, Wangari told her plant mukuyu, the giant sacred fig, the drinker of water, which acts as nature's filter to clean streams.

This book really captures the spirit of the African culture, specifically the Kenyan notion of harambee (swahili) which means pulling together for the common good. I really enjoyed the oil painting illustrations which brilliantly captured the villager's clothing and the green landscape.

This book describes the Green Belt Movement which started in Kenya by Wangari Muta Maathai who was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for working to revitalize a deforested Kenya. This book tells the story as if Wangari is a town elder who gives advice to women who travel from all over the country for her help. She becomes known as Mama Miti which means the mother of trees.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

I loved the illustrations in this book! My birthday is on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. day too. His speech is amazing.

I loved this book, it is Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have A Dream“ speech. He is a very important person in history and his speech is also an important part of history as well during the Civil Rights movement. He fought for equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantages and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest.

Like Papa, Susy wrote and wrote, filling over 130 pages. To conclude her biography, she relied on an eyewitness account to provide an anecdote that summed up Papa perfectly.

I loved the illustrations in this book. I think it is amazing that the book contained little flaps of Susy's journal with her writing in it.

This book tells the story about Mark Twain's life from the viewpoint of his daughter, Susy. People thought that Mark Twain was a jokester. She was determined to show people that he was so much more by writing in a journal which she kept under her pillow. She wrote about both his good and bad habits, from his writing routine to their family's home life. She wrote a amazing biography which gave rare insight and an unforgettable perspective on him.

We went to see Bo Diddley, who my mom said was one of the most important musicians of all time. As I watched him onstage, I raised my trombone to my lips and started to play along. He stopped his band in the middle of the song and asked the crowd, “Who's that playing out there?“

I liked how the illustrations in this book are very lively. I liked how this book celebrates the rich cultural history of New Orleans and the power of music.

This book is about a boy, Troy, who got the nickname “trombone shorty“ because he had a trombone twice as tall as he was. He was a prodigy, leading his own band by age six. This book also tells the story of how his dream started. He did not always have the money to buy an instrument, but he did have a dream to play music. Today, he headlines the New Orleans Jazz Fest.

As a large crowd of Italians and Americans took their seats, the horse stayed in hiding. Speeches were made. The Italian national anthem was sung. Then the American national anthem. Finally, the strings anchoring the balloons were cut and the cloth rose into the sky.

I loved the shape of this book, it is very unique. I also loved how the illustrations helped capture the Renaissance period of history. I really enjoyed the page where Leonardo talks about how he had never achieved anything but the Mona Lisa is in the illustration in the background.

This book was written about a specific creation of Leonardo da Vinci. He dreamed of building a giant horse for the Duke of Milan which was 24 feet tall but he never finished it. Many things got in his way like the war. Airplane pilot, Charlie Dent was an artist and wanted to see Leonardo's horse completed, so his horse finally made it to Milan. I thought this book brought historical figures to life.

Sequoyah began drawing hundreds of symbols, one for each word. He scratched them on slats of wood and filled his cabin with shingles of writing.

I enjoyed how this book was written in poem form as well as had the writing system in it as well. I liked being able to visually see how he created it.

This book is a tale about a man who has an idea to create a writing system for the Cherokee Indians, so he can turn his people into readers and writers. Sequoyah knows no English but he still managed to create a writing system which shocked his people. This book is in poem form.

She does not sail from port to port. She does not carry passengers or mail or packages. She holds to one sure spot as other ships sail by. She waits.

I liked this book because I learned that a lightship helps other ships sail to safety by marking the way through fog and night. I did not know this before.

I liked this book about a lightship. It contains information about the people who work on the ship, what the ship does, about what is below the deck of the boat, and how the people do their jobs in the different seasons.

The walking stick doesn't move. All day, she stays still. She can't run fast. She can't fly. She can only hide, camouflaged like a stick.

I enjoyed the illustrations, they went well with the facts given. It made it easy to visualize how the walking stick lives and goes about life.

I enjoyed this book about the walking stick insect because I had no prior knowledge about this bug. This book tells you about how they survive in wet weather conditions, how they protect their eggs, and mostly how they camouflage to hide from predators. This book also takes you on an adventure with the walking stick through the different seasons along with appropriate facts.

In the North Tower, the fire department even had trouble contacting their fire fighters as they climbed the stairs to the impact zone. Their handheld radios barely operated. Making and receiving orders was hit or miss.

I loved the illustrations with curvy lines and not too much detail but very good shading.

I loved this book about 9/11. It is told like a story but still contains the facts. This would be a good book for children to read about this historical tragedy if they do not know much about it. The illustrations help visualize the order of events as well.

A spider's body has two main parts. The back part is called the abdomen. This contains the heart, which pumps pale blue blood (yes, blue!), and the spinnerets, which make silk.

The photographs were amazing but hard for me to look at because spiders freak me out.

This book talks about the different sizes of spiders, different kinds of spiders, fangs, molting, weaving webs, hunting, dancing and eating. It gives you very detailed and close up photographs of the spiders so beware--spooky. But so awesome if you want to learn more about spiders!

A newborn, soft and hungry, hurrying to seal itself into a cocoon, where it can be still and cozy until it becomes what it was meant to be.

I loved the colorful and vibrant illustrations in this book about beetles. It makes it very fun to read.

I liked how this book started with “a beetle is...“ and then goes on to talk about specific facts about what the beetle is. It tells you about how a beetle is born, types of beetles, what they do, how they act, and how they are harmful and helpful as well as prehistoric.

A snow leopard can jump 50 feet (15 meters) farther than any other land animal.

I liked the different graphs and colors. It helped me understand the facts better. I liked how the pictures of the animals were in different places on each page.

I liked this book because it contains numbers to help the reader understand comparisons and things like how fast animals are, how big they are, and how loud they are. It gives facts and figures and the animals are presented visually as graphs, symbols, and illustrations. This is great for visual learners like me.

With a 9-foot wingspan, and weighing as much as 23 pounds, the condor is the largest land bird in North America.

The illustrations were beautiful and very detailed. I also loved the pull out pages and the cuts in the pages to see onto the next page, very fun and creative!