Sailors on old sailing ships sang songs with a strong, steady beat while hauling ropes. Why did the songs have that beat?

Kadir Nelson wrote the book We Are the Ship about Negro League baseball. What else did he do for the book?

Kadir Nelson made a book called Heart and Soul that paints the long story of America and African Americans.

Tomie dePaola made a picture book that retells an old Texas legend about how one flower came to be. Which flower?

In Tomie dePaola's book Strega Nona, a grandmother in an Italian village owns a magic pot. What does the pot make?

Tomie dePaola only wrote the words in his books, and other people always drew the pictures.

Carmen Lomas Garza wrote the words in Family Pictures, and she also painted its pictures herself.

Carmen Lomas Garza's book Family Pictures is printed in two languages. Which two?

Carmen Lomas Garza painted birthday parties, making tamales, and picking cactus. Where did those scenes come from?

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books came from her own childhood. What kind of life do they describe?

Laura Ingalls Wilder's first Little House book is set in a log cabin in the big woods of which state?

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her family traveling by covered wagon to a new home on the prairie.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote one book, Farmer Boy, about somebody else's childhood. Whose?

Woody Guthrie traveled across the country in hard times and wrote a famous song about the land. Which song?

Woody Guthrie wrote songs in the 1930s, a time of dust storms and hard times. Who do his songs mostly tell about?

The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor was a gift to the United States. Which country gave it?

The Statue of Liberty stands at the entrance to New York Harbor. Who saw it first as they arrived?

Along the Pacific Northwest coast, families carved tall wooden poles. What do the carvings on them record?

Northwest Coast carvers used the trunk of one tree for their tall poles. Which tree?

A carver puts a raven at the top of a new pole. In many old Northwest Coast stories, what did Raven bring to the world?

A mariachi group from Mexico plays music passed down for many years. Which instruments do they play?

Mariachi music began in the small towns of western Mexico.

Before printed books were common, how did most communities pass their history to the next children?

A family sews a quilt from scraps of old clothes. What can that quilt tell the family years later?

A community paints a big mural on a wall showing the workers who built the town. Why paint it there?

Some dances copy the movements of work people did, like planting or pulling in nets. What do those dances keep alive?

People in a village near tall bamboo made their flutes out of bamboo. Why did they choose it?

A family moves to a new town and teaches the neighbors songs from their old home. What happens to those songs?

Families who settled in the Appalachian Mountains brought old story-songs called ballads from Scotland and Ireland. What did those ballads carry to their new home?

Grandparents danced to a live band. Their grandchildren dance to the same songs played from a phone. What changed?

A town puts up a statue of a firefighter who saved people long ago. What is the statue for?

The Statue of Liberty was carved from one huge block of white stone.

Art, music, and dance are only decorations, and they tell us nothing about a community's past.

Many communities have folk tales that explain how a plant or an animal came to be. What do those tales pass on?

Carmen Lomas Garza also cuts paper into lacy designs called papel picado. Which country's folk art is that?

Kadir Nelson has never made art for anything except children's picture books.

Some communities kept their history in songs instead of books. How does a song do that job so well?

At a city festival, families dance the dances they brought from the countries they came from. What does the festival show?

A museum keeps a painting of the town's main street made 100 years ago. What can it show visitors today?

Older people in a community teach their old songs and dances to the children. Why does that matter?