What must it have been like to be the first to circumnavigate the globe or traverse America from shore to shore? What political, social and financial factors of the day encouraged exploration? What personal dreams and desires drove these fearless men to search the vast unknown waters and lands, to tempt danger time and time again, all in the name of discovery? In Great Explorations, acclaimed authors including recent Laura Ingalls Wilder Award winner Milton Meltzer guide us through the adventures of the indomitable explorers who knew first-hand the joys and sorrows of pioneering.
"We are all emigrants from the same country — the land of childhood. What I want to do is write about the journey all of us have taken — or are in the process of taking — from that special place."
Patricia Calvert celebrates her birthday on July 22nd. She grew up in the mountains of Montana, in what was "a magic world for any child, one in which lodgepole pines grew like arrows toward a sky that seemed always blue." Even though Ms. Calvert knew she wanted to be a writer when she was ten, it wasn't until her daughters were grown and had moved away from home and she and her husband moved to Minnesota that she concentrated on her writing.
Among her books, The Snowbird and Yesterday's Daughter have both been named to ALA's Best Books for Young Adults list. Glennis, Before and After received a Christopher Award. Betrayed! (Atheneum) appeared in 2002 and Robert E. Peary: To the Top of the World (Benchmark) in 2001. Most recently, Ms. Calvert has been focusing on nonfiction writing, bringing us biographies of Zebulon Pike and Kit Carson, as well as The Ancient Celts.