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Books

The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party	Great Courtroom Lawyers: Fighting the Cases that Made History	Zap! A Brief History of Television

Operation Grizzly Bear	Tracking Wildlife with Frank Craighead	Bikes

Readers from kids to adults get caught up in the "story" part of history through my nonfiction books. A source on the Web, Zenger Media, summarized my strength as a writer: "Serious history written in uncomplicated sentences."

"Our students were captivated … Marian Calabro's presentation provided a virtual field trip. What a successful author visit!"
— Praise from Gennie Williams, Library Media Teacher, Lincoln Elementary School, Burlingame, California

I enjoy making presentations to schools and libraries. Most often I speak about The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party, showing slides of my research trips and answering questions about getting published.

For more information on my author visits, please contact me directly.

For a full author biography of Marian Calabro, please see Something About the Author (Volume 79), or Contemporary Authors (Volume 147), available at public libraries.

The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party

Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin (hardcover)

ISBN 0-395-86610-3

Scholastic Book Clubs (paperback)

In 1846, three years before the Gold Rush, a group of well-to-do families set out from Illinois for California. Within months, they would face trouble crossing the Great Salt Lake desert. Then they would be trapped all winter by 22 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We know them today as the Donner Party, and we remember them mainly for their cannibalism. But there is much more to their true story, which Marian Calabro tells through the eyes of 13-year-old survivor Virginia Reed.

Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.

"Truth is indeed as spellbinding as fiction . . . . The research is meticulous and the telling, almost conversational in tone, is riveting." — Boston Globe

"The book comes alive with details about clothing, household items and, always, the food, even the tiniest morsels . . . . From the haunting cover with its lonely campfire to the recounting of a survivors' reunion, this is a page-turner." — Ilene Cooper, ALA Booklist (starred review)

"Eerie and mesmerizing . . . . Readers of all ages can transport themselves back a century and a half to one of the darkest ordeals in American history . . . . This story has often been sensationalized or overdramatized, and here it is not. Included in 183 pages are maps, photos, etchings, diary entries, a chronology of events, a roster of the dead, and list of Donner Web sites." — Julie Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

California Library Association Beatty Award

Virginia Library Association Jefferson Cup Award (Honor Book)

Featured on National Public Radio's Looseleaf Book Company with Tom Bodett

Selected by Scholastic Book Clubs

An ALA Notable Book and Booklist Editor's Choice

New York Public Library Top 100 List

Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Horn Book, and other media

Great Courtroom Lawyers: Fighting the Cases that Made History

Facts On File (hardcover)

ISBN 0-8160-3323-4

This collection of biographical essays focuses on nine attorneys and the causes and clients on whose behalf they pleaded so passionately. Those profiled are criminal defenders Clarence Darrow, F. Lee Bailey, and William Kuntzler; Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, who presided at Nuremburg; Thurgood Marshall and John W. Davis, who squared off in the battle over school desegregation (Brown v. the Board of Education); and three pioneering women — Belva Lockwood (also the first woman to legitimately run for U.S. president), abortion rights activist Sarah Weddington (Roe v. Wade) and Linda Fairstein (New York City sex crimes prosecutor).

"Heroic yet realistic profiles. The writing is clear and the explanations of legal concepts are nicely handled . . . . Exciting reading." — ALA Booklist

Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.

Zap! A Brief History of Television

Macmillan/Four Winds Press (hardcover)

ISBN 0-02-716242-7

"This chock-full-of-facts book covers the history of TV through entertaining anecdotes and information. Well-organized and refreshingly readable." — Library Journal

Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.

Operation Grizzly Bear

Macmillan/Four Winds Press (hardcover)

ISBN 0-02-716241-9

"Calabro's account of grizzly bear research done by Frank and John Craighead is an involving synthesis of bear lore and field narrative. Several dramas provide suspense." — ALA Booklist

Available through your local bookstore or www.bn.com.

Tracking Wildlife with Frank Craighead

Bikes: The World's Most Efficient Traveling Machines

These paperback books are available for classroom use from Pearson Education, as part of the company's Book Treks series from Celebration Press.

Reach me by email or call 1-201-288-2036.