New Nonfiction Books

The Declaration of Independence - Judith Lloyd Yero
Describes the events leading to the composition and signing of the Declaration of Independence, and discusses the document's importance in American history. From the "American Documents" series.

The Bill of Rights - Judith Lloyd Yero
Judith Lloyd Yero's thought-provoking text, coupled with carefully selected images from the past and present, challenge young readers to carefully examine and understand the Constitution's first ten Amendments, which guarantee their basic human rights. In addition to defining these rights, Yero puts them into the context of present-day life so that kids will recognize that the Bill of Rights is as important to their daily lives as it was to the lives of the first citizens of the newly independent United States. Included in the back matter are the full text of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Miranda Rights. From the "American Documents" series.

An Inconvenient Truth - All Gore
This young readers' version of the recent documentary film's companion adult volume cuts the page count by about a third but preserves the original's cogent message and many of its striking visuals. After explaining that his interest in the environment predates even his mother's reading of Silent Spring aloud to him as a teenager, Gore proceeds to document steeply rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, and then to link that to accelerating changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide. Using easy-to-grasp graphics and revealing before-and-after photos, he shows how glaciers and ice shelves are disappearing all over the globe with alarming speed, pointing to profound climate changes and increased danger from rising sea levels in the near future.