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Teachers - Will We Ever Learn? The Mohawks Who Built Manhattan. For generations, Mohawk Indians have left their reservations in or near Canada to raise skyscrapers in the heart of New York City. High atop a New York University building one bright September day, Mohawk ironworkers were just setting some steel when the head of the crew heard a big rumble to the north.

Suddenly a jet roared overhead, barely 50 feet from the crane they were using to set the steel girders in place. “I looked up and I could see the rivets on the plane, I could read the serial numbers it was so low, and I thought ‘What is he doing going down Broadway?’” Recalls the crew’s leader, Dick Oddo. Crew members watched in disbelief as the plane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, just 10 blocks away. At first, Oddo says, he thought it was pilot error. Like Oddo, most of the Mohawk crews working in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, headed immediately to the site of the disaster.

Walking the iron Mohawks have been building skyscrapers for six generations. 7 Nonfiction Children's Books Blending Whimsy and Education. By Maria Popova From typography to tsunamis by way of quantum physics, or what Langston Hughes has to do with LEGO. Artful and fanciful children’s books make frequent cameos around here. Part of what makes them so great is their ability to whisk the young reader away into an alternate reality full of whimsy and possibility. But the present reality is often full of so much fascination we need not escape it to have our curiosity and imagination tickled. We’ve previously seen how comic books can be a medium for nonfiction, and today we turn to 7 wonderful kind-of-children’s books that bring imaginative storytelling to real, and in many cases serious, issues for young minds to ponder.

Images via Imprint Prolific poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes is considered one of the fathers of jazz poetry, a literary art form that emerged in the 1920s and eventually became the foundation for modern hip-hop. HT @Lissa Rhys; images courtesy of Mark Batty Publisher. 7 (More) Children's Books by Famous "Adult" Literature Authors.

By Maria Popova What a magical car engine has to do with social justice, a parrot named Arturo and the history of jazz. A week ago, we featured 7 little-known children’s books by famous authors of “grown-up” literature, on the trails of some favorite children’s books with timeless philosophy for grown-ups. The response has been so fantastic that, today, we’re back with seven more, based on reader suggestions and belated findings from the rabbit hole of research surrounding the first installment.

Aldous Huxley may be best known for his iconic 1932 novel Brave New World, one of the most important meditations on futurism and how technology is changing society ever published, but he was also deeply fascinated by children’s fiction. In 1967, three years after Huxley’s death, Random House released a posthumous volume of the only children’s book he ever wrote, some 23 years earlier.

The wonderful We Too Were Children has the backstory. Thanks, stormagnet Thanks, Rachel Thanks, SaVen Share on Tumblr. Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia.