Thomas Gonzalez

"There is a ship, a navy ship. It is called the USS New York. It is big like other navy ships, and it sails like other navy ships, but there is something special about the USS New York. Following the events of September 11, 2001, the governor of New York gave the Navy a steel beam that was once inside one of the World Trade Towers. The beam was driven from New York to a foundry in Louisiana. Metal workers heated the beam to a high, high temperature....

Told in free verse, the story of the American effort to land the first man on the moon comes to life. During the two thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine days following his speech, eighteen astronauts climbed into spaceships; three of them died before even leaving the ground. Eight rockets soared into space. And four hundred thousand people-- engineers, technicians, scientists, mathematicians, and machinists-- joined Project Apollo in hopes of making...

"Over millions of years, organisms in Antarctica--one of the most extreme environments on Earth--have evolved in amazing ways that enable them to thrive on the ice, in the ice, and under the ice. How is climate change affecting the creatures that live in this frozen world? Even in the intensely cold, windy, and dry environment of Antarctica, a wide variety of wildlife--from the massive swarms of krill in the Southern Ocean to the throngs of penguins...