“What is this country bumpkin up to? Is this some kind of a joke?” Laughter rippled through the conference room in Richmond as Lemuel Chenoweth unloaded his saddlebags and took out a bunch of oak sticks wrapped in newspapers. He was the last builder to show his plans for the great competition in 1850 to build a bridge across the Tygart River in western Virginia (now West Virginia). Only a ferry connected the bustling north-south throughway at Philippi, causing traffic jams and the slowing of our young nation’s relentless commerce and travel.  Engineers had come from all over the east to show their plans … blueprints of cable suspension bridges, fancy cantilevered structures, an arched bridge. It had to be durable, and support wagonloads of heavy goods and herds of livestock. ridge across the Tygart River in western Virginia (now West Virginia). Only a ferry connected the bustling north-south throughway at Philippi, causing traffic jams and the slowing of our young nation’s relentless commerce and travel.  Quietly Lemuel assembled a miniature bridge, using no hammer or nails. Compared to the fancy bridge models shown, his was plain. Then, he pulled out two chairs, placed his construction across them, and spoke.  “Since I have no blueprints,” he said, “you may allow me a demonstration.”  Suddenly he stepped up onto the top of the model, and walked across it--from one end to the other. A gasp went up. No way could it hold! They knew their mathematics. Had this been the actual bridge it would have been as if a six-hundred-foot man stood on it. But the model held, and in the hushed silence that followed, Lemuel turned to the other contestants and asked, “Can you stand on your models?” No one dared. They all knew theirs would be crushed.  And that's how Lemuel Chenoweth, a shy western Virginian with a third-grade education, won the competition for the famous Tygart River Bridge. The double-barreled bridge has survived fires, the Civil War, floods, and 18-wheeler trucks. It is the only covered bridge left in the US serving a federal highway. It has its own museum, and in 1983 Governor Jay Rockefeller declared June 15 Lemuel Chenoweth Day.  Lemuel started out making furniture, wagons, and coffins, and later built houses, a church, and many bridges. He married Nancy Hart, the great-granddaughter of John Hart, signer of the Declaration of Independence. They had 13 children. So how do we know about this story? Because Lemuel Chenoweth was my great-great- granddaddy, and throughout my childhood I heard the story of Lemuel, the model bridge, and the two chairs.  Roxie Munro's newest book uses thirty-seven of her favorite masterpieces by great artists as an inspiration for her own masterpiece that is a cityscape and a game. You can read a review of the book here. Roxie is also a member of iNK's Authors on Call where you can invite her to your classroom virtually.  MLA 8 Citation Munro, Roxie. "Lemuel's Bridge." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 16 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/lemuels-bridge.
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The word “mania” refers to feelings of frenzy, increased physical activity, and an especially good mood. So when four mop-haired musicians from Liverpool, England were taking the world by storm in 1963, Canadian music writer Sandy Gardiner thought it was the perfect term to describe the effect they had on audiences: “A new disease is sweeping through Britain, Europe and the Far East...and doctors are powerless to stop it. Its name is—BEATLEMANIA!” The following year, Beatlemania came to the United States when George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television program. During the show and the live concerts that followed, members of the audience—largely teenage girls—screamed and shrieked. The Beatles weren’t the first musicians to inspire a mania. That honor belongs to 19th century Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt, whom many music historians call the world’s first rock star for his scintillating performances in solo recitals. The frenzy he induced in his audiences prompted the German poet Heinrich Heine to coin the term “Lisztomania” in 1844. Liszt enjoyed many of the same perks as the Beatles: hero worship, adoring groupies, hobnobbing with royalty, widespread media coverage, and more. Liszt was very handsome and fully aware of his good looks. Everything he did on stage was calculated to produce the maximum dramatic effect. As his fingers rippled over the piano keys, he flung his head from side to side as his shoulder-length hair cascaded around his face. He was so energetic that globs of sweat sometimes sprayed the front rows. His audience—mainly women in their 20s, 30s and 40s—totally bought into his act. Like Beatles spectators, they screamed at dramatic spots in the recital. Often they went further. As the last notes of the concert rang out, many rushed the stage in their zeal to obtain a souvenir. Almost anything would do—a piece of his clothing, strands of his hair, broken piano strings, the fabric of the chair he had sat on. They especially wanted the still-damp handkerchiefs Liszt used to wipe his face. Perhaps the ultimate prizes were his discarded cigar butts. Women lucky enough to snatch one would light it and thereby gain quite literally a taste of their hero. There’s a tangible connection between the two manias. They both inspired movies--A Hard Day’s Night (1964) for the Beatles, and Ken Russell’s Lisztomania eleven years later. In the Russell film, the role of the Pope is played by…Ringo Starr!  A Liszt concert often created a sensation. Listen to Franz Liszt's music by hitting the arrow above. Can you understand why the ladies had romantic thoughts when they listened to him?  With more than 170 (and counting!) non-fiction books Jim Whiting is Washington State’s most prolific children's author. For more about Jim, read his biography and background.  MLA 8 Citation Whiting, Jim. "Musical Mania." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 19 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/musical-manias.
The biggest bang in two thousand years was heard as far as sixteen hundred miles away. It happened in April of 1815, on the island of Sumbawa in the southwest Pacific Ocean, now part of Indonesia. Mount Tambora erupted in an immense volcanic explosion. Seventy-one thousand islanders were killed almost immediately. The big bang began a global cataclysm that sowed the broadest crop of human misery any single earthly event has yielded. Tambora’s eruption hurled millions of tons of ash and sulfur high into the circulating jet-stream, cooling temperatures around the world. It delayed the monsoon rains that were supposed to sustain crops around the Indian Ocean. Floods followed drought along with a deadly surge in the water-borne disease, cholera: tens of millions died of it all along the Ocean’s shores and as far north as Moscow. As the shroud of ash spread north, China’s rice crop failed in cold weather: more millions died. The volcano’s effects reached the higher latitudes of Europe in 1816. Crops were killed by hard frosts in spring and summer. The price of oats and wheat tripled, quadrupled. “Bread Riots” swept through the streets of British and European cities as starving farm families crowded the cities, looking for any kind of work. In North America, hard frosts were recorded in every month of 1816. Late-sown seedling plants were killed as far south as Virginia, where retired President Thomas Jefferson’s crops were destroyed, plunging him into lifelong debt. Snow fell across New England on July 6, 1816, a foot deep in Quebec City, Canada. Steam railroad lines weren’t laid, yet, so grain couldn’t be brought from warmer southern fields. An exodus of failed northern farmers left family homes to populate those milder Midwest prairies. They called this year of famine and disappointment, “Eighteen Hundred and Froze-To-Death.” While millions of the poor starved, wealthy classes of Europe were merely inconvenienced by Tambora’s weather. A privileged group joined the poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron to “summer” in Switzerland. Storms and cold drove them indoors where they competed to write the best “ghost story.” Percy’s wife Mary Shelley won with Frankenstein. Byron’s personal doctor, John Polidori, also wrote a humdinger: The Vampyre, which was adapted by Bram Stoker decades later as Dracula. Tambora’s chilling effects lasted only three years. Our own challenge of global warming is building more slowly but could be even more troublesome. Tambora’s big bang taught us that we all share cataclysms and weather, even a world away.  The 1815 Tambora volcano produced an estimated thirty six cubic miles of exploded rock and ash which showered down in varying depths over land as far away as eight hundred miles to the northwest. But it was the debris that the jet stream carried over Asia, Europe and North America that earned 1816 the title "year without a summer." NASA  This photograph depicts the summit caldera of the Mount Tambora volcano more than a hundred years after its massive explosion. A collapse was triggered by the emptying of the magma chamber beneath the volcano as the result of the 1815 eruption. The volcano removed the mountain's estimated thirteen thousand-foot high peak leaving a hollow area 3.7 miles in diameter and thirty-six hundred feet deep. By Tisquesusa via Wikimedia Commons  Adkins' latest book is about the first drive in an automobile. The wife of the inventor took her kids to see their grandparents. Learn more about it here.
The author/illustrator is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. 
You know that presidential humans have lived in the White House since 1800, but so have MANY presidential pets, especially dogs. From those owned by John and Abigail Adams to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Scottie, Fala, to Bo and Sunny, the Portuguese Water Spaniels who live with President Obama’s family, there have been lots of presidential pooches. President Clinton’s daughter Chelsea had Socks, the cat, but really, there haven’t been so very many kitty cats in the White House. So how about other kinds of pets? Well, John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline had Macaroni, the pony. Willie and Tad Lincoln loved to hitch up their pet goats Nanny and Nanko to a cart or even kitchen chairs and go banging and bumping through the White House! Thomas Jefferson had pet mockingbirds. James and Dolley Madison kept a parrot. So did Andrew Jackson, but his cussed and swore horribly! President Taft’s pet cow Pauline and Old Ike, one of Woodrow Wilson’s sheep, used to graze on the White House lawn. Among Calvin Coolidge’s many pets were Rebecca, the raccoon, and a donkey named Enoch. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, things really got lively, inside and outside the White House. He and his wife had six children and boy oh boy, did they have pets! Besides plenty of horses, dogs, and a couple of cats, there was a lizard, a pig, a rabbit, a rat, one small bear, five guinea pigs, a macaw, an owl, a one-legged rooster, and Josiah, the badger. Beautiful bratty Alice, the oldest daughter, loved startling people by taking Emily Spinach out of her handbag. (Emily was a green snake, named after a skinny aunt.) One day, Archie Roosevelt, one of Alice’s little brothers, was sick upstairs. Two of her other brothers, Quentin and Kermit, got their Shetland pony Algonquin into the White House elevator and up they went to visit Archie. As his dad, President Roosevelt would say, Archie was “deee-lighted!” Visiting pets didn’t go over quite so well when little Quentin interrupted an Oval Office meeting and accidentally dropped the four snakes he brought to show his dad! Oh yes, it can be difficult being the president. Long, long ago, President Harry Truman said that, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Remember that, if you ever get elected. And when you move to the White House, don’t forget to bring your pet!
 One of Cheryl Harness's best known picture books is her fantastical, factual Ghosts of the White House. "Do I really believe that dead presidents spook around the White House, talking about when they lived there? NO! But I'm not above using FANTASY to explain HISTORY! Each president represents a chapter in the story of our country!"  MLA 8 Citation Harness, Cheryl. "White House Friends with Fur and Feathers." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 18 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/white-house-friends-with-fur-and-feathers. 
How well do you handle spicy food? Do you find food with a “kick” eye-watering and difficult to swallow? Or are you a real “fire eater;” nothing can be too hot?
A scientist, named Wilbur Scoville, figured out how to rank spicy food for hotness in 1912. The “heat” from peppers comes from a chemical called capsaicin (cap-say-sin). Pure capsaicin registers 16 million heat units on the Scoville scale. Zero is a sweet green, red or yellow pepper. A fresh, green Jalapeño (ha-la-pen-yo) is rated 2,500-8,000 units, a lot less hot than pure capsaicin. The fact is that you don’t “taste” the heat. The sensation of heat comes from nerve endings in your tongue that respond to pain. Of course, these nerve endings are not just in your tongue. They are all over your body. So a good scientific question is: Can you “taste” hot sauce with, say, your wrist? Check it out. Rub the inside of your wrist with a cut Jalapeño pepper or some hot sauce. Wait a few minutes. Feel the burn? Rinse off your wrist well with cool water. Your tongue, of course, is much more sensitive than your wrist to many chemicals because it is always wet. Capsaicin, like a lot of other chemicals dissolves in water and reaches those nerve endings more quickly. Another liquid that triggers your pain nerves in your tongue is soda. The carbon dioxide in the bubbles reacts with an enzyme in your mouth to form a weak chemical called carbonic acid. This acid fires the pain nerve endings in your tongue giving soda its “bite.” How well can you tolerate this pain? Stick your tongue into a freshly opened glass of soda and hold it there. See how long you can keep it in the drink. One minute? Two minutes? Most people can’t last a minute. But maybe you’re tougher than that. Some Mexican parents give their kids mixtures of sugar and red chili powder when they’re little to build up their tolerance for spicy foods. Do you think that people who love spicy food could also be champions at keeping their tongues immersed in soda? Design an experiment to find out at your next party. Hot Stuff from Vicki Cobb on Vimeo. atonguelashing from Vicki Cobb on Vimeo. 
These videos were made from Vicki Cobb’s book We Dare You! She invites you to join her video project and make your own videos from her book and post them on the www.wedareyouvideos.com website. Vicki Cobb is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. 
MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "Some Painful Truth." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 17 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/some-painful-truth. |
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For Vicki Cobb's BLOG (nonfiction book reviews, info on education, more), click here: Vicki's Blog *NEWSFLASH *
The NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Committee is pleased to inform you that 30 People Who Changed the World has been selected for Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2018, a cooperative project of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) & the Children’s Book Council Categories
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