Tells how settlers on the treeless plains built houses from the prairie sod itself.

Food historian Cynthia Clampitt pens the epic story of what happened when Mesoamerican farmers bred a nondescript grass into a staff of life so prolific, so protean, that it represents nothing less than one of humankind's greatest achievements. Blending history with expert reportage, she traces the disparate threads that have woven corn into the fabric of our diet, politics, economy, science, and cuisine. At the same time she explores its future as a source of energy and the foundation of seemingly limitless green technologies. The result is a bourbon-to-biofuels portrait of the astonishing plant that sustains the world.

Best Friends Forever There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy's age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do—a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy's fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy becoms such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person—Betsy-Tacy. Betsy and Tacy have lots of fun together. They make a playhouse from a piano box, have a sand store, and dress up and go calling. And one day, they come home to a wonderful surprise—a new friend named Tib. Ever since their first publication in the 1940's, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.

Eager young readers can now discover and experience Laura Ingalls Wilder's books like never before. Author Annette Whipple encourages children to engage in pioneer activities while thinking deeper about the Ingalls and Wilder families as portrayed in the nine Little House books. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion provides brief introductions to each Little House book, chapter-by-chapter story guides, and "Fact or Fiction" sidebars, plus 75 activities, crafts, and recipes that encourage kids to "Live Like Laura" using easy-to-find supplies. Thoughtful questions help the reader develop appreciation and understanding of Wilder's stories. Every aspiring adventurer will enjoy this walk alongside Laura from the big woods to the golden years.

"No one so well knows the life of pioneer settlements," writes Addison E. Sheldon in the foreword to this book, "as the country doctor, and the country editor, and it might be added, the country postmaster who (in the popular pioneer belief) knew every letter written or received by every person in the community and read all the postcards." No wonder, then, that Dr. Sheldon considered Cass G. Barns uniquely well equipped as a local historian, for Barns served his community in all three capacities. A country doctor who combined farming with medicine, he had a part in the founding and management of the first industries of Boone County, Nebraska, became the editor of a newspaper, county commissioner, and postmaster. The Sod House is a personal narrative?the intimate story of the settlement and frontier years (1867-1897) of the Nebraska prairie country lying between the Elkhorn and Loup rivers. In the worlds of Dr. Sheldon, himself a pioneer Nebraskan, "It preserves for all future generations a faithful picture of the period and the region which it describes."