It's the time of the gold rush, and Chang has come with his grandfather to California from China. Chang's dream is to own a horse of his own. With luck ... and a little gold dust ... that wish just might come true.

When the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Mieko's nearby village was turned into ruins, and her hand was badly injured. Mieko loves to do calligraphy more than anything, but now she can barely hold a paintbrush. And she feels as if she has lost something that she can't paint without-the legendary fifth treasure, beauty in the heart. Then she is sent to live with her grandparents and must go to a new school. But Mieko is brave and eventually learns that time and patience can help with many things, and may even help her find the fifth treasure.

A story about Buffalo Bill and his exploits as a pony express rider.

California, here we come!Faith's Pa says there's no room on a wagon train for Josefina, a chicken who's too tough to eat and too old to lay eggs. But Faith loves her pet. Can Josefina show Pa that she still has a few surprises left in her?

The purpose of this book is to give media specialists, teachers and/or teacher helpers and parents a guide to using beginning chapter books to encourage first and second graders to read independently. The book contains in-depth lesson plans for 35 early chapter books. Each lesson contains bibliographic information plus setting, characters, plot, solution, and book summary. Activities for the media specialist to provide schema, prediction, fluency, and information literacy skill instruction is provided as well. Teacher activities included address phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, and the comprehension strategies of recall, inference, and synthesis. Each book section also features a parent take-home page of extension/enrichment ideas.

Whether two teachers are covering the same topic in separate classes, or designing a thematic unit with the school librarian, this handy guide to nearly 800 award-winning historical fiction for Kindergarten through 8th grade will assist all parties in the selection of high quality literature.