"Engaging images accompany information about Illinois. The combination of high-interest subject matter and narrative text is intended for students in grades 3 through 8"-- Provided by publisher.

Presents the history, geography, climate, plants and animals, cities, transportation, natural resources, industry, sports, entertainment, and people of Illinois, as well as general facts about the state.

During the recession of 1937, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

In the year 2035, robots are a common, trusted part of life. But that trust is broken when a scientist is found dead, and a skeptical Chicago police detective investigating the murder believes that a robot is responsible. It seems impossible for a robot to break the Three Laws of Robotics, for if that were to happen there would be nothing to stop them from taking over the world. Aiding the detective in his investigation is a psychologist who specializes...

Celebrating the final days of summer, thirteen-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his friends declare war on the stuffy older set of their community, an effort for which the boys plot to stop the courthouse building clock as a means of staying young forever.

A mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again. After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. When a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin, barefoot and covered in bruises, Joanna enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor, Gabriel Nash, to solve the...

In the fall of 1997, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls began their quest to win a sixth NBA title in eight years. But despite all Jordan had achieved since his sensational debut thirteen years earlier, 'The Last Dance,' as coach Phil Jackson called it, would be shadowed by tension with the club's front office and the overwhelming sense that this was the last time the world would ever see the greatest player of all time, and his extraordinary teammates,...

When three-year-old Benji is plucked from the security of his home in Nagasaki to live with his American father, Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, and stepmother, Kate, on their farm in Illinois, the family conceals Benji's true identity as a child born from a liaison between an officer and a geisha. But when the truth about Benji surfaces, it will splinter this family's fragile dynamic, sending repercussions spiraling through their close-knit rural...