El Tombuctú

Born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867, Marie Curie was forbidden to attend the male-only University of Warsaw, so she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study physics and mathematics. There she met a professor named Pierre Curie, and the two soon married, forming one of the most famous scientific partnerships in history. Together they discovered two elements and won a Nobel Prize in 1903. (Later Marie won another Nobel award for chemistry in 1911.) She died in Savoy, France, on July 4, 1934, a victim of many years of exposure to toxic radiation.

María José grieves at the loss of her mother who died in childbirth. She has difficulty sharing her feelings with her father and the distance between them grows with the appearance of a new woman. Her father gets another job which forces them to move to another neighborhood. The new house is small, but is near an ice cream store owned by Mr. Beto. In the store, María José makes friends with girls and boys her own age, but also meets Mr. Beto and his friends. María José and her friends try to help Mr. Beto when he comes down with a sudden illness.

We use machines every day, but most of us don't understand how they work. When they break down, most of us have no idea how to fix them. Mechanics are the masters of machines. Readers learn that mechanics work on vehicles, including cars, boats, and buses. They use special tools to take them apart and fix what's wrong, and they use their experience and technology to diagnose problems. They often work long hours, sometimes in bad weather, to get us where we need to go. Your readers will see that mechanics keep our world moving and growing.

Images of Rainbow Fish's undersea world, from a red starfish to a brown snail, reinforced by facing pages in the appropriate color, teach the colors. On board pages.