A Robert F. Sibert Honor Book By the start of the eighteenth century, many thousands of sailors had perished at sea because their captains had no way of knowing longitude, their east-west location. Latitude, the north-south position, was easy enough, but once out of sight of land not even the most experienced navigator had a sure method of fixing longitude. So the British Parliament offered a substantial monetary prize to whoever could invent a device to determine exact longitude at sea. Many of the world's greatest minds tried -- and failed -- to come up with a solution. Instead, it was a country clockmaker named John Harrison who would invent a clock that could survive wild seas and be used to calculate longitude accurately. But in an aristocratic society, the road to acceptance was not a smooth one, and even when Harrison produced not one but five elegant, seaworthy timekeepers, each an improvement on the one that preceded it, claiming the prize was another battle. Set in an exciting historical framework -- telling of shipwrecks and politics -- this is the story of one man's creative vision, his persistence against great odds, and his lifelong fight for recognition of a brilliant invention.

The Longitude Prize

Children's Books

Joan Dash

Dušan Petričić

Biographies

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

The World at Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller

scholastic

In the early 1900s, the shirtwaist industry in New York was very unfair to the young women employed in its factories. Now in paperback is the story of teenage workers and important female activists in their courageous fight for humane working conditions in 1909. Photos.

We Shall Not Be Moved: The Women's Factory Strike of 1909

History

Demco Media

We Shall Not Be Moved : The Women's Factory Strike of 1909

Bt Bound

Before the world understood that lightning was electricity, Ben Franklin set out during an electrical storm with a kite and a length of wire. At the time of this experiment, Franklin was unaware that his theories about electricity had made him a celebrity all over Europe, esp. in France. Admired by the French court and beloved by French citizens, Franklin effectively became America s first foreign diplomat. A father of the Revolution and a signer of the Constitution, Franklin was a lightning rod in political circles -- a dangerous Engine, according to a critic. And though he devoted the last 25 years of his life to affairs of state, his first love was always science. This is the story of adventure, of one man s curiosity and the extraordinary rewards of his discoveries. Illus.

Dangerous Engine: Benjamin Franklin, from Scientist to Diplomat

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

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Books by Joan Dash