Patricia Brennan Demuth: 14 books

Like Michelangelo, Galileo is another Renaissance great known just by his first name--a name that is synonymous with scientific achievement. Born in Pisa, Italy, in the sixteenth century, Galileo contributed to the era's great rebirth of knowledge. He invented a telescope to observe the heavens. From...

More than two thousand years ago, with his land under constant attack from nomads, the First Emperor of China came up with a simple solution: build a wall to keep out enemies. It was a wall that kept growing and growing. But its construction came at a huge cost: it is believed that more than a million...

You've probably seen her on t-shirts, mugs, and even tattoos, well, now that famous face graces the cover of our latest Who Is? title. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is famous for her stylish collars (called jabots) and her commanding dissents. This opera-loving New Yorker has always spoken her...

Autism did not stop her--in fact, it helped Temple Grandin become a brilliant scientist and inventor. Temple Grandin wasn't officially diagnosed with autism until she was in her 40s, but she knew at an early age that she was different from her family and classmates. She couldn't show affection,...

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, an armada of 7,000 ships carrying 160,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France. Up until then the Allied forces had suffered serious defeats, yet D -Day, as the invasion was called, spelled the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany and...

From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island was the gateway to a new life in the United States for millions of immigrants. In later years, the island was deserted, the buildings decaying. Ellis Island was not restored until the 1980s, when Americans from all over the country donated more than $150 million. It...

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, based on her own childhood and later life, are still beloved classics almost a century after she began writing them. Now young readers will see just how similar Laura's true-life story was to her books. Born in 1867 in the "Big Woods" in Wisconsin,...

A terrifying attack! On December 7, 1941, Japanese war planes appeared out of nowhere to bomb the American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. It was a highly secretive and devastating attack: four battleships sunk, more than two thousand servicemen died, and the United States was propelled into...

With a bag of seeds and a pot on his head, John Chapman set out West to plant apple trees. He made lots of friends and planted lots of trees. Pretty soon, people started to call him Johnny Appleseed.

Who was the real Charlie Chaplin? Kids will learn all about the comic genius who created "The Little Tramp"! Charlie Chaplin sang on a London stage for the first time at the age of five. Performing proved to be his salvation, providing a way out of a life of hardship and poverty....

Bill Gates, born in Seattle, Washington, in 1955, is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. In this Who Was...? biography, children will learn of Gates' childhood passion for computer technology, which led him to revolutionize personal computers. Through the success of...

Blast off and explore the star of our solar system—the Sun! Billions of stars fill the universe. But for humans, the most important star is the one closest to Earth—the Sun. From vitamin D to solar energy, the Sun provides the power necessary to sustain life on our planet. And as the center...

This nonfiction reader shines a light on Thomas Edison and his greatest invention—the lightbulb! As a curious child who was always asking questions, it's no wonder Thomas Edison grew up to become a famous, prolific inventor. This easy-to-read nonfiction story follows Edison from his time...

We the people at Who HQ bring readers the full story--arguments and all--of how the US Constitution came into being. Signed on September 17, 1787--four years after the American War for Independence--the Constitution laid out the supreme law of the United States of America. Today it's easy for...