nonfiction Archives - Page 568 of 658

Noah Webster’s Fighting Words
by Tracy Nelson Maurer (Author) and Mircea Catusanu (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Noah Webster, famous for writing the first dictionary of the English language as spoken in the United States, was known in his day for his bold ideas and strong opinions about, well, everything. Spelling, politics, laws, you name it–he had something to say about it. He even commented on his own opinions! With a red pencil in hand, Noah often marked up work that he had already published. So who edited this book? It certainly looks like the ghost of the great American author and patriot picked up a pencil once again to comment on his own biography!

Snippet: So, Noah worked harder than ever to make spelling easier. He argued for spelling each word the way it sounded.

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Voyager’s Greatest Hits: The Epic Trek to Interstellar Space
by Alexandra Siy (Author)

Booktalk: 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the Voyager mission as the twin space probes that traveled to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, now journey beyond our solar system into interstellar space, where no probe has ventured before. Learn the fascinating story of the scientists, how the Voyager probes work, where the probes have been and what they’ve seen, and what they carry on board–including the Golden Record, a recording of sounds and images about life on Earth.

Snippet: It’s 1965 and the Beach Boys are singing about California girls. Over in Pasadena a graduate student named Gary Flandro is studying aeronautics at Caltech. Gary also has a part-time job: not flipping burgers, but investigating missile trajectories at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). This is literally rocket science.

Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, aboard a Titan III-Centaur rocket.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)