Historical Nonfiction

The inspiring stories of five people who changed history, including Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who helped humans to fly; Louis Blériot, the first person to cross the sea in an aeroplane; Charles Lindbergh, the first person to cross the Atlantic alone; Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic; and Amy Johnson, the British woman who broke flying records This book is level 2 in the Collins ELT Readers series.

America meant "freedom" to the immigrants of the early 1900s - but a freedom very different from what they expected. Cities were crowded and jobs were scare. Children had to work selling newspapers, delivering goods, and laboring sweatshops. In this touching book, Newberry Medalist Russell Freedman offers a rare glimpse of what it meant to be a young newcomer to America.

Many people came to America in the early 1900s looking for jobs, opportunity, and freedom, and a lot of them were kids. But what happened to all these immigrant children after they passed inspection at New York’s Ellis Island - that is, if they passed inspection? Life was not easy for immigrants. Large families lived in small, one-room tenement apartments with failing plumbing and few windows. Children had to go to school with kids from different countries and learn to read and write a new language.