When he was born, Albert was a peculiar, fat baby with an unusually big and misshaped head. When he was older, he hit his sister, bothered his teachers, and didn’t have many friends. But in the midst of all of this, Albert was fascinated with solving puzzles and fixing scientific problems. The ideas Albert Einstein came up with during his childhood as an odd boy out were destined to change the way we know and understand the world around us . . .

A Sac and Fox Indian, Jim Thorpe was born Wa-tho-huck ("Bright Path") in Oklahoma in 1888. His childhood was a mix of hard work on his family’s ranch, wild days hunting and living rough in the outdoors, and a succession of dreary, military-strict "Indian Schools" that sought to impose white culture on Indian children. Jim hated them and frequently ran away, but it was at one such school, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that his life would change. Watching some student athletes practicing the high jump, Jim asked if he might try. Wearing overalls and a work shirt, he effortlessly cleared the bar on his first attempt—breaking the school’s high jump record. He was drafted onto the track and football teams by the school’s coach, Pop Warner, and went on to lead Carlisle to victories over the best college teams of the time. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe won the five-event Pentathlon with a score that would never be beaten, and the even more grueling Decathlon with a score that stood for 20 years.

When he was born in 1879, Albert was a peculiarly fat baby with an unusually big and misshaped head. When he was older, he hit his sister, frustrated his teachers, and had few friends. But Albert’s strange childhood also included his brilliant capacity for puzzles and problem solving: the mystery of a compass’s swirling needle, the intricacies of Mozart’s music, the secrets of geometry—set his mind spinning with ideas. In fact, Albert Einstein’s ideas were destined to change the way we know and understand the world and our place in the universe.
In spare, precise text filled with graceful detail and accompanied by sometimes humorous, sometimes lonely portraits, Don Brown introduces us to the less than magnificent beginnings of an odd boy out. The result is a tender rendering of the adventures of growing up for one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

Mack Sennett invented the Keystone Kops, filmed the first pie-in-the-face skit, and introduced Charlie Chaplin to the movies. Here Don Brown tells the story of this American movie genius, from his beginnings as a Vaudeville actor to his triumph as the "King of Comedy"

Dolley was a farm girl who became a fine first lady when she married James Madison. She wore beautiful dresses, decorated her home, and threw lavish parties. Everyone talked about Dolley, and everyone loved her, too. Then war arrived at her doorstep, and Dolley had to meet challenges greater than she’d ever known. So Dolley did one thing she thought might make a difference: she saved George Washington. Not the man himself, but a portrait of him, which would surely have been destroyed by English soldiers. Don Brown once again deftly tells a little known story about a woman who made a significant contribution to American history.

Sam Glodsky lives among the rough-and-tumble gangs on the streets of New York's Lower East Side. When 13-year-old Sam falls in with fearsome gangster Monk Eastman, he joins an outrageous scheme to rescue Eastman's prize racing-pigeon from a cholera-ridden steamship quarantined in the harbor. The caper Monk hatches to snatch the bird pairs Sam with his archenemy, the notorious Izzy Fink. Widely acclaimed for his picture book histories, Don Brown?s first historical novel is a fast-paced tale of immigrant life at the turn of the twentieth century.

A Sac and Fox Indian, Jim Thorpe was born Wa-tho-huck ("Bright Path") in Oklahoma in 1888. His childhood was a mix of hard work on his family’s ranch, wild days hunting and living rough in the outdoors, and a succession of dreary, military-strict "Indian Schools" that sought to impose white culture on Indian children. Jim hated them and frequently ran away, but it was at one such school, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that his life would change. Watching some student athletes practicing the high jump, Jim asked if he might try. Wearing overalls and a work shirt, he effortlessly cleared the bar on his first attempt—breaking the school’s high jump record. He was drafted onto the track and football teams by the school’s coach, Pop Warner, and went on to lead Carlisle to victories over the best college teams of the time. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe won the five-event Pentathlon with a score that would never be beaten, and the even more grueling Decathlon with a score that stood for 20 years.