After fourteen years of construction, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, much to the delight of the sister cities it connected: Brooklyn and New York City.
Fireworks and top hats filled the air in celebration when the magnificent bridge opened in 1883. But some wondered just how much weight the new bridge could hold. Was it truly safe?
One man seized the opportunity to show people in Brooklyn, New York and the world that the Brooklyn Bridge was in fact strong enough to hold even the heaviest of passengers. P. T. Barnum, creator of "The Greatest Show on Earth," would present a show too big for the Big Top and too wondrous to forget.

Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom--and once he realized that knowledge was power, he secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage. After escaping to the North in 1838, as a free man he gave powerful speeches about his experience as a slave. He was so impressive that he became a friend of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as one of the most famous abolitionists of the nineteenth century.

Wheels are busy. On banana carts, they're pushed; on dog wagons, they're pulled. On bikes they're pedaled forward; on tow trucks, towed backward "Wheels work, and wheels play. / That's what WHEELS do all day " The rhyming text is written in both English and Spanish in this dynamic board book, each language clearly differentiated with color. Laroche's extraordinary three-dimensional paper-relief artwork makes every colorful scenario pop, whether the wheels are spinning, whirring, racing, or rolling.

A humorist, narrator, and social observer, Mark Twain is unsurpassed in American literature. Best known as the author of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Mark Twain, not unlike his protagonist, Huck, has a restless spirit. He found adventure prospecting for silver in Nevada, navigating steamboats down the Mississippi, and making people laugh around the world. But Twain also had a serious streak and decried racism and injustice. His fascinating life is captured candidly in this enjoyable biography.