Central Kansas Library System

Millions of tons of plastic slip into oceans every year. Some floats and travels slowly with the currents, endangering the health of marine animals. The rest is hardly visible but is far more dangerous. Tiny bits of plastic sprinkle the ocean's surface or mix into the sandy seafloor and beaches. It ends up inside birds, fish, and other animals, harming them-and ultimately humans. Experts struggle with fear and hope as they work to stop the flood of...

The long-term damage from an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant more than 30 years ago is still unknown. When explosions ripped through the reactor in rural Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, they spewed huge amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere and caused the worst nuclear disaster in history. About 10,000 people have died or will die because of their exposure to radiation, and experts worry about the children born...

To the untrained eye, Photo 51 was simply a grainy black and white image of dark marks scattered in a rough cross shape. But to the eye of a trained scientist, it was a clear portrait of a DNA fiber taken with X-rays. And to young scientists James Watson and Francis Crick, it confirmed their guess of deoxyribonucleic acid's structure. In 1953, the pair was racing toward solving the mystery of DNA's structure before other scientists could beat them...

A series of photos taken from space more than 20 years ago revealed thousands of unknown galaxies in a tiny patch of "empty" space. Called the Hubble Deep Field, the amazing image is made up of hundreds of photos combined into one. It was taken over the course of 10 days from the Hubble Space Telescope and has prompted astronomers and other scientists to speculate about universe's size, shape, and age. How long ago did the first galaxies appear? Have...

Weighing as much as a small car, a rover named Curiosity rolls quietly around Mars. Scientific instruments pack its body and cluster at the end of a mechanical arm. An arrangement of lenses and instruments tops its mast, like a face. To the many NASA workers involved in Curiosity's mission on Mars, the rover is not simply a robot, but an astronaut bravely exploring an alien place. Curiosity's instruments collect data and its cameras take images of...

Ever since a car accident left Tillie Green with lasting painful injuries, she's hidden behind her camera. She watches her family and classmates through the lens, tracking down misplaced items and spotting the small details that tell a much bigger story than people usually see. But she isn't prepared for class clown Jake Hausmann's request: to find his father. In a matter of days, Tillie goes from silent observer to one half of a detective duo, searching...

In her inspiring New York Times bestseller Unlikely Friendships, Jennifer Holland introduced us to the heartwarming relationships that exist between animals of different species. Her stories struck a chord with thousands of readers, including Temple Grandin, who described the book as "amazing." Now Holland explores animal attachments that, in human terms, can only be called love. Packed with beautiful, breathtaking full-color photographs, Unlikely...

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people descended on Washington, D.C. They came by bus, car, and bicycle. Some even walked hundreds of miles to be there. On that day, the massive crowd gathered to march, protest, sing, and support the Civil Rights Movement and to demonstrate that the time had come to end segregation in the South. To a captivated audience, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of his "dream," when African Americans would have equal rights....

Martin Luther King, Jr., called Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in America. In 1963, he and other civil rights leaders believed it was time to change that. With marches and protests throughout the city, civil rights activists hoped the movement would draw national attention. Hundreds of young African Americans joined the cause, marching for equal rights. Angry segregationists reacted, violently. And it would play out in newspapers and...

"Discusses Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball and an iconic photograph that captured the historic even"--