PG-15 Non-Fiction

Booksellers' non-fiction recommendations for teens

Chasing Lincoln's Killer (Hardcover)

By James L. Swanson
$16.99
ISBN-13: 9780439903547
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scholastic Press, 2/2009
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From the layout of the title page - which includes a facsimile of a newspaper headline announcing Lincoln's assassination and Booth's escape - to the final map of the route that John Wilkes Booth followed from Washington, D.C., to the Garrett farm in Virginia, CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER sizzles. 

Follow the killers' and the investigators' every move, the trial and eventual execution of the conspirators. James Swanson has adapted the subject matter of his adult book, Manhunt, to provide older readers an excellent non-fiction work about Lincoln’s assassination, chock-full of photographs, quotes, and other primary sources in a text that is can't-put-it-down exciting.  Ages 10-14. • Dara La Porte

The Mysteries of Beethoven's Hair (Hardcover)

By Russell Martin, Lydia Nibley
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781570917141
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Charlesbridge Publishing, 2/2009
Dressed in green surgical scrubs, a mask and gloves, scalpel in hand, Dr. Guevara approaches the sterile table.  He is not performing surgery, but this task is just as delicate.  Dr. Guevara is opening a 170-year-old locket containing Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair.  When Beethoven died, 15-year-old musical protégé Ferdinand Hiller cut a lock of  Beethoven’s hair and placed it in a locket for safekeeping.  Now Dr. Guevara hopes to unlock The Mysteries Of Beethoven’s Hair (Charlesbridge, $15.95).  Forensic tests might help explain Beethoven’s deafness, his emotional difficulties and his illnesses.  Russell Martin and Lydia Nibley interweave aspects of the brilliant composer’s life, modern history and present-day scientific methods in this fascinating book.  Ages 10-14.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Paperback)

By Tanya Lee Stone, Margaret A. Weitekamp
$17.99
ISBN-13: 9780763645021
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Candlewick, 2/2009
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In its early days, NASA and other federal agencies fought to keep women and minorities out of the space program; in 1961 the Mercury 13 women were fully qualified to be astronauts—except that they were not men. These pioneers paved the way for women pilots and astronauts decades later. Ages 10-14.

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland (Library Binding)

By Sally M. Walker
$22.95
ISBN-13: 9780822571353
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Carolrhoda Books, 2/2009
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Sally M. Walker followed forensic anthropologists, scientists and others as they uncovered gravesites in Jamestown and colonial Maryland to learn about their lives from what is Written In Bone (Carolrhoda, $22.95).Looking at the skull of an apprentice that had been discarded in a household trash pile, the scientists can tell that the apprentice had a raging toothache before he died.  Other skeletons reveal (mal)nutrition, diseases, and injuries.  This book contains insights into the scientific process and offers a  compelling look at colonial America.  Ages 10-14.