Explores the atmospheric layers that wrap around Earth, and explains how each layer has a different effect on the way we live on Earth.

Explores the atmospheric layers that wrap around Earth, and explains how each layer has a different effect on the way we live on Earth.

Splash with the Stickmen at the sea's surface, and then dive down through the darkening zones and into the abyss. But don't stop there! Follow the Stickmen to snorkel around coral gardens, find creatures that make their own light, and dive 7 miles down to the deepest trench. The Stickmen have plenty of oxygen (and wild facts) to keep you alert as you float past coral gardens, pods of humpback whales, robotic submarines, and the weirdest creatures of the deep.

Travel from the tops of skyscrapers to the depths of the subway system of a bustling city! Find out how people make use of each layer along the way.

How do planes stay in the air? What is vertical takeoff? How does a pilot control altitude in a hot-air balloon? Join the Stickmen to find out how mechanisms work. Get an insider's view of these airborne wonders!

Earth's atmospheric layers include the exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere. How and why have scientists divided Earth's atmosphere into these layers? What exactly are these layers made up of? What happens in each layer? Readers will learn the answers to these questions and more in this enriching text that supports curricular science studies. Readers will identify the various traits of each of the atmospheric layers, ascertain their functions, and appreciate their significance in regulating conditions on Earth.

Star Mounds is a full-color illustrated study of the precolonial monuments of the greater Ohio Valley, woven together with over fifty "medicine stories" inspired by Native American mythology that demonstrate the depth of the knowledge held by indigenous peoples about the universe they lived in. The earthworks of the region have long mystified and intrigued scholars, archeologists, and anthropologists with their impressive size and design. The landscape practices of pioneer families destroyed much of them in the 1700s, but, during the first half of the 1800s, some serious mapmaking expeditions were able to record their locations. Utilizing many nineteenth-century maps as a base—including those of the gentlemen explorers Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis—author Ross Hamilton reveals the meaning and purpose of these antique monuments. Together with these maps, Hamilton applies new theories and geometrical formulas to the earthworks to demonstrate that the Ohio Valley was the setting of a manitou system, an interactive organization of specially shaped villages that was home to a sophisticated society of architects and astronomers. The author retells over fifty ancient stories based on Native American myth such as "The One-Eyed Man" and "The Story of How Mischief Became Hare" that clearly indicate how knowledgeable the valley's inhabitants were about the constellations and the movement of the stars. Finally, Hamilton relates the spiritual culture of the valley's early inhabitants to a kind of golden age of humanity when people lived in harmony with the Earth and Sky, and looks forward to a time when our own culture can foster a similar "spiritual technology" and life-giving relationship with nature.

The popular Rookie Books expand their horizons - to all corners of the globe! With this series all about geography, emergent readers will take off on adventures to cities, nations, waterways, and habitats around the world...and right in their own backyards.

After a very heavy snowfall in Florence, Italy, Sandro, the youngest page in the palazzo of Piero De' Medici, tries to find out why the ruler has summoned the sculptor, Michelangelo.

Fourteen authors, including many of the best-known scholars in the field, explore how people actually experience their culture and how those experiences are expressed in forms as varied as narrative, literary work, theater, carnival, ritual, reminiscence, and life review. Their studies will be of special interest for anyone working in anthropological theory, symbolic anthropology, and contemporary social and cultural anthropology, and useful as well for other social scientists, folklorists, literary theorists, and philosophers.