Janet and Geoff Benge

John's heart sank. A British man-of-war was plowing through the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean in hot pursuit of his ship. If the British caught up with the Boston, John would be hanged. He had proudly signed the Declaration of Independence and was c

Laura stared at the black cloud blotting out the sun. The cloud was unlike anything she had ever seen. As it got closer, it made a strange noise, like hail pelting the ground. Suddenly the sky began to rain grasshoppers. The bugs clung to Laura's hair and

When the water supply canteens ran dry again, Louie began to doubt they'd survive. He thought back to when he first arrived in Hawaii and Eddie Rickenbacker, and his crew had just been rescued from a record twenty-one days drifting on a raft much like the

Despite warnings that they would all be drowned, the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition paddled toward the ferocious rapids. Sucked into the tempest, their canoes pitched and rolled in the thrashing water and thumped over jagged rocks, but the men kept

"We've done more than our share to see you right, but you're a Hershey, a true son of a dreamer," Milton's Uncle Abraham said. "You'll never stick with anything long enough to make it work for you." Milton gulped. He'd already suspected that his relatives

At last Orville was free, soaring above the sand dunes, wind in his face. Lying in the glider's wing, he moved his hips in the control cradle and the craft began to turn as planned. But then something went wrong. The glider wanted to go into a spin, and a

When Dutch was fifteen years old, several drownings occurred on the Rock River. Something had to be done to make it safe for swimmers. Dutch came up with an idea, and was hired as a lifeguard. He never forgot that the lives of people depended upon him, an

Bleeding, Teddy stood to address the crowd. "Friends, I should ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know if you fully understand that I have been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose." The crowd went silent at the revelation, and

Questions. Questions. Questions. That was how Tom worked--always thinking, always asking questions, until he arrived at a deep understanding or insight that he could use to develop some new invention. As far back as he could remember, Tom had always been

William shivered and his teeth chattered. Out on the water it was bone-chillingly cold. He could no longer feel his toes, and the spray splashing over the side of the shallop left a glaze of ice on his jacket. If the cold kept up much longer, William fear

"You fool of a boy!" William's father screamed. "You had the world ahead of you, and you threw it away for some religious meeting. Why, Parliament has ordered the heads of a dozen Puritans to be stuck on poles around the city as a warning against disobeyi

William wondered how anyone was supposed to battle slavery. After all, King George III and the Church of England both had large amounts of money invested in trade with the West Indies. And a large number of bishops sat in the House of Lords. William shook

As he gripped the reins firmly, Winston surveyed the enemy line in before him. It consisted of several hundred Mahdists—Sundanese tribal fighters dressed in black and white robes. The curved blades of their razor-sharp swords glinting in the early morning