Akron House Mystery

This story takes place in Springfield, the capital of the state of Illinois. Springfield is an interesting city with a long history. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), one of America’s most famous presidents, lived and worked here for many years.

Connect to the Internet and search for information about Illinois.

The American Civil War was a war between the North and South of the United States. It was a terrible war in which about 630,000 soldiers died. The Southern States In the South, there were a lot of cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations.1 Black slaves2 worked on these plantations. Their lives were very difficult. They were not free because they belonged to an owner who bought and sold them. Some owners were cruel. [...]

The alarm clock1 rang at seven o’clock in the morning, and Carol and Steve woke up and jumped out of bed. They had to catch a plane. They looked outside their bedroom window and it was a sunny day in beautiful San Francisco, California. Carol is a pretty girl of fourteen, with long brown hair and big blue eyes. She likes school and wants to be a journalist. She also plays volleyball on the school team. [...]

Footsteps in the Night

In 1803 the United States President, Thomas Jefferson, bought the Louisiana territory1 from France. He paid $15 million for this huge piece of land and called it the Louisiana Purchase.2 In 1682 the French explorer, La Salle, named this area Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV of France. It went from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains; but no one knew how big the land was. [...]

The Old Desk

Matthew Kelly

A Sad Love Story

There are still about 400 one–room schools in the United States today. Connect to the Internet and search for information about an unusual one–room school in the middle of the hot desert in California.

The Sunday Paper

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a very important festivity, and schools and most businesses close for four days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. People travel across the nation to be with their families on this occasion. The Pilgrims The Thanksgiving tradition began with the Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers. These men and women were the founders1 of a colony in North America. [...]

Connect to the Internet and search for information about these three topics: Wampanoag, Mayflower II and the 17th-Century English Village.

After Reading