Ralph L. Ramstad – illustratör

In 1847 the people of Niagara Falls, New York and their neighbors in Canada wanted to build a bridge across the river that separated them. The first step was to get a line from one side to the other. Only a kite flown with great skill could do the job. Tekla White tells the story, based on real events, of young Homan Walsh and the kite he called the Union. Ralph Ramstad''s illustrations beautifully depict Homan''s history-making effort near Niagara Falls.

In 1803, Meriwether Lewis was offered the chance of a lifetime. The president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, asked him to lead an expedition across North America, through the Louisiana Territory and Oregon Country to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis jumped at the opportunity and called on his friend William Clark to share in the command of the exploration. The two men organized a small unit of volunteers they called the Corps of Discovery. They had little idea of what dangers lay ahead in the mysterious lands. Would they be attacked by wild animals? Could they survive winter''s harsh weather? On May 21, 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition embarked on one of the greatest adventures of all time. they would change the country forever, as they traveled into the Back of Beyond.

When Jules Verne was born in 1828, his family had his future planned out for him. They expected him to become a lawyer, but he dreamed of writing. He started out writing more traditional poetry and plays, but then he began to create a new, unconventional kind of fiction. It combined adventure, the modern world of science and invention, and his personal view of the future. With fantastical characters, spaceships to the moon, and deep-sea submarines, his books told of things that would not actually occur for decades.

Born a slave in Georgia in 1818, Bridget "Biddy" Mason learned to survive in a harsh world. Taken from her parents as a young child, Biddy grew up to be self-reliant and hard working. When she and her children finally found freedom in California in 1855, she turned her nursing skills into a successful career as a midwife. Even after she became a wealthy landowner in Los Angeles, Biddy never forgot her basic philosophy of sharing with others: "The open hand is blessed," she always said, "for it gives in abundance, even as it receives."

Growing up in a Quaker family in the South in 1830, Levi Coffin did not support slavery, but he was exposed to its atrocities. Convinced that every person deserved to be free, Levi began helping slaves escape to the North along the Underground Railroad, and during the following 40 years he was able to help over 3,000 people find freedom.