Children's books and activities
Detectives and Explorers
Do you know any young sleuths, adventure-seekers, or explorers? We've gathered up a great collection of books, activities, apps, and websites for learning all about detectives and explorers.
Try pairing fiction with nonfiction books and exploring different genres (like poetry and biographies) and formats (like graphic novels and audio books). You'll be creating your own "text sets" — collections of texts focused on a specific topic, such as detectives and explorers. Reading widely in this way helps children build background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.
You might also want to explore DIY Science Camp: Archaeology.
Great Fiction & Nonfiction Books
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Print List
Alphabet Mystery
By: Audrey Wood
Age Level: 3-6 years old
When the lower case x from Charley's alphabet disappears, the other letters set off to find...
Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do
By: Katherine Heling, Deborah Hembrook
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Follow That Map! A First Look at Mapping Skills
By: Scot Ritchie
Age Level: 3-6 years old
One day when Sally and her friends are playing, they notice that her dog and cat are missing....
I Spy Mystery: A Book of Picture Riddles
By: Jean Marzollo
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Polo: The Runaway Book
By: Regis Faller
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Fiction
The chase is on when Polo's book is stolen by a small alien. Polo, an engaging hound, pulls...
When You Wander: A Search-and-Rescue Dog Story
By: Margarita Engle
Age Level: 3-6 years old
A golden retriever with a "smart nose" is doing his job: tracking down a young child lost in the...
Why?
By: Richard Torrey
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Nonfiction
Young Cam Jansen and the Lost Tooth
By: David Adler
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Print List
7 Ate 9
By: Tara Lazar
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Private I tries to assuage 6 who just knows that 7 is coming to get him! Why? Because 7 8 9, of...
A Big Day for Baseball
By: Mary Pope Osborne
Age Level: 6-9 years old
When Jack and Annie don the magic baseball hats given to them by Morgan, they find themselves...
Ace Lacewing: Bug Detective
By: David Biedrzycki
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Archaeologists Dig for Clues
By: Kate Duke
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Archaeologists on a dig work very much like detectives at a crime scene. Every chipped rock,...
Around the World: Three Remarkable Journeys
By: Matt Phelan
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Follow three long ago adventurers who traveled around the world by bike, by herself, and on a...
Baby Monkey, Private Eye
By: Brian Selznick , David Serlin
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Who is Baby Monkey? Well, he’s a baby and a monkey but one with a job: he’s a Private Eye!...
Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World
By: Tracey Fern
Age Level: 6-9 years old
By the Great Horn Spoon!
By: Sid Fleischman
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Jack leaves the comfort of his aunt's Boston home lured west by the California Gold Rush....
Cam Jansen and the Green School Mystery
By: David Adler
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Cam (short for "Camera") uses her photographic memory to help solve the theft of the...
Chasing Vermeer
By: Blue Balliett
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
As mysterious things happen in and around their Chicago school, Petra and Calder use their...
Chet Gecko, Private Eye Series
By: Bruce Hale
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Chet Gecko is a sassy, wisecracking fourth-grade detective. Along with Natalie Attired, his...
Dare the Wind: The Record-breaking Voyage of Eleanor Prentiss and the Flying Cloud
By: Tracey Fern
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation
By: Mark Teague
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Encyclopedia Brown Series
By: Donald Sobol
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Boy detective Encyclopedia Brown is the fifth-grade mastermind behind Idaville's police...
Flotsam
By: David Wiesner
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Gold in the Hills: A Tale of the Klondike Gold Rush
By: Candice Ransom
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Hermelin the Detective Mouse
By: Mini Grey
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Offley is a vibrant street where a delightful white mouse named Hermelin lives and narrates his...
How the Sphinx Got to the Museum
By: Jessie Hartland
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The history of the Hatshepsut sphinx: from its carving in ancient Egypt to its arrival in the...
Hurricane
By: David Wiesner
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
As the sky grays and the leaves swirl by in a "green blizzard," two young boys and...
Julian, Secret Agent
By: Ann Cameron
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Julian narrates the story of how he, his little brother Huey and best friend Gloria become...
Keep On! The Story of Matthew Henson
By: Deborah Hopkinson
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Matthew Henson, the African American who accompanied Robert Peary on an expedition to the North...
King & Kayla and the Case of the Secret Code
By: Dori Hillestad Butler
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Kayla is a human girl who solves mysteries with a bit of help from her dog, King. Together they...
Letters from Camp: A Mystery
By: Kate Klise
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Three pairs of siblings, sent to a summer camp that helps brothers and sisters get along, must...
Melonhead and the Undercover Operation
By: Katy Kelly
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Melonhead and his friend Sam go undercover thinking that they have identified a notorious...
Monster Hunt: Exploring Mysterious Creatures
By: Jim Arnosky
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Author/illustrator and self-taught naturalist Jim Arnosky introduces mysteries that surround...
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
By: Brian Floca
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Relive the journey of the Apollo 11 where the first people stepped on the moon's surface...
Mrs. Harkness and the Panda
By: Alicia Porter
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Nate the Great
By: Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Meet Nate the Great, the neighborhood detective. He's just finishing up breakfast (pancakes...
Patterns in Peru: An Adventure in Patterning
By: Cindy Neuschwander
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs
By: James Rumford
Age Level: 6-9 years old
In 1802, when Champollion was eleven years old, he vowed to be the first person to read Egypt...
Sharuko: El Arqueólogo Peruano Julio C. Tello / Peruvian Archaeologist Julio C. Tello
By: Monica Brown
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
A bilingual picture book biography of Peruvian archaeologist and national icon Julio C. Tello,...
Super Sniffers: Dog Detectives On the Job
By: Dorothy Hinshaw Hinshaw Patent
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The Boxcar Children: Houseboat Mystery
By: Gertrude Chandler Warner
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny used to live alone in a boxcar. Now they have a home with heir...
The Buzz on Bees: Why Are They Disappearing?
By: Shelly Rotner, Anne Woodhull
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Bees have been around for over 65 million years but have been in decline since early in the 21st...
The Capital Catch (Ballpark Mysteries)
By: Dsavid A. Kelly
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Mike and Kate are back to solve a new mystery. This one is in the Nation’s Capital, where the...
The Dinosaur Museum
By: National Geographic
Age Level: 6-9 years old
This interactive guide takes you on a room-by-room tour of a natural history museum.You can open...
The Great Art Caper
By: Victoria Jamieson
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
GW, the hamster enjoys his evenings with his animal friends and is even beginning to like the...
The Museum Book: A Guide to Strange and Wonderful Collections
By: Jan Mark
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The Secret Cave: Discovering Lascaux
By: Emily Arnold McCully
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
While looking for gold, four French boys accidentally discovered what was to be considered the...
The Stunning Science of Everything: Science with the Squishy Bits Left In
By: Nick Arnold, Tony De Saulles
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Sophisticated young scientists will enjoy dipping in and out of this funny but edifying...
The Talking T. Rex (An A to Z Mystery)
By: Ron Roy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Friends and amateur detectives Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose set out to help their friend whose...
The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest
By: Steve Jenkins
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Exploring its history, geography, climate, and culture, this unique book takes readers on the...
The Wrigley Riddle
By: David Kelly
Age Level: 6-9 years old
What Darwin Saw: The Journey that Changed the World
By: Rosalyn Schanzer
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Print List
Archaeology for Kids
By: Richard Panchyk
Age Level: 9-12 years old
This activity book features 25 projects such as building a screen for sifting dirt at a dig,...
Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers (Science Comics Series)
By: MK Reed
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
In this graphic novel, learn all about the history of paleontology! This fascinating look at...
Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars Rover and Beyond
By: Martin Jenkins
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
From the ancient astronomers to the latest ideas about building a space elevator to make...
Flush
By: Carl Hiaasen
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the...
Historium: Welcome to the Museum
By: Jo Nelson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Welcome to the museum! Discover a collection of curated objects on every page, accompanied by...
Homer on the Case
By: Henry Cole
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Fiction
A homing pigeon teams up with a parrot and their humans to investigate an animal crime spree in...
How We Crossed the West: The Adventures of Lewis and Clark
By: Rosalyn Schanzer
Age Level: 9-12 years old
The Lewis and Clark expedition was well-documented by the explorers themselves; their travels...
I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer
By: Carole Boston Weatherford
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Matthew Henson, an African American explorer, accompanied Robert Peary to the North Pole where...
If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge
By: Marc Aronson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
No matter how much is known, there's always more to learn. In a fascinating re-examination of...
Lost in Outer Space: The Incredible Journey of Apollo 13
By: Tod Olson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
From "Houston, we've had a problem" to the final tense moments at Mission Control, Lost in Outer...
Mr. Chickee's Funny Money
By: Christopher Paul Curtis
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Muddy Max: The Mystery of Marsh Creek
By: Elizabeth Rusch
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Max and his soil scientist parents live in a marsh where Max discovers mud’s special properties...
Park Scientists: Gila Monsters, Geysers, and Grizzly Bears in America’s Own Backyard
By: Mary Kay Carson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Real Pigeons Fight Crime
By: Andrew McDonald
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Fiction
What do real pigeons do? They fight crime, of course! Meet the heroic pigeons secretly flying...
Saving Kabul Corner
By: N.H. Senzai
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Twelve-year-old Ariana, a tomboy, and her ladylike cousin Laila, recently arrived from...
Secret Coders
By: Gene Yang
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Hopper dreads moving but dreads attending Stately Academy. Is it creepy beyond imagination; but...
Secret Coders: Secrets & Sequences
By: Gene Luen Yang
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Can the three friends — Eni, Hopper, and Josh — foil the dastardly principal to save the day?...
Secrets of Stonehenge
By: Mick Manning
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Why was this amazing monument erected? How did our Stone-Age ancestors bring such massive stones...
Sharuko: Peruvian Archaeologist Julio C. Tello / El Arqueólogo Peruano Julio C. Tello
By: Monica Brown
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Peruvian archaeologist and national icon Julio C. Tello unearthed Peru's ancient cultures and...
Stones, Bones, and Petroglyphs: Digging into Southwest Archaeology
By: Susan Goodwin
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Ancestral Puebloan people lived in the Mesa Verde region of Colorado for over a thousand years,...
Tesla’s Attic
By: Neal Shusterman
Age Level: 9-12 years old
The first in the Accelerati Trilogy, 14-year old Nick, his younger brother and his father have...
The 5,000-Year-Old Puzzle: Solving a Mystery of Ancient Egypt
By: Claudi Logan
Age Level: 9-12 years old
It is 1924, two years after the discovery of King Tut's tomb. Readers are invited to join a...
The Mighty Mars Rovers
By: Elizabeth Rusch
Age Level: 9-12 years old
This book tells the greatest space robot adventure of all time through the eyes — and heart — of...
Hands-on Activities
Build on what you're learning together through books with these family-friendly activities, experiments, and crafts.
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Ancient Stone Circle
BBC Hands on History -
Astronaut Glove Box
Start with a Book -
Backyard Photo Scavenger Hunt
No Time for Flash Cards -
Backyard Scavenger Hunt
National Wildlife Federation -
Big Dig/Little Dig
Start with a Book -
Cipher Wheel
Top Spy Secrets -
Cookie Excavation
Florida Public Archaeology Network -
Deep Sea Diver
PBS Sci Girls -
Design a Mission Patch
Start with a Book -
Dinosaur Train Geocaching
PBS Parents -
DIY Telescope
Start with a Book -
Dragon Hunter Goggles
Dad Can Do -
Geocache Trail
National Wildlife Federation -
How High Could You Jump on the Moon?
Start with a Book -
Hunting for Animal Tracks
Woodland Trust -
Invisible Ink
PBS KIDS -
Mars Lander
Start with a Book -
Moving and Working in Space
Start with a Book -
Pirate Scavenger Hunt
The Flourishing Abode -
Plaster Casts of Animal Tracks I
Rosie Research -
Plaster Casts of Animal Tracks II
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Plaster of Paris Petroglyphs
Pink Stripey Socks -
Pottery Puzzle: Piecing It All Together
American Museum of Natural History Ology -
Rock Collection
American Museum of Natural History Ology -
Sandpaper Petroglyphs
Start with a Book -
Scavenger Hunt! Exploring Grandma's Attic
Family Tree Magazine -
See Your Own Fingerprints
SciShow Kids -
Spy Periscope
Exploratorium -
Stuff to Do Outside
Discover the Forest -
Tea-Stained Treasure Maps
Kiwi Company -
Time Capsule
BBC Hands on History -
Treasure Map
National Wildlife Federation -
Water Detective
Start with a Book
Summer Writing
Give kids a chance to flex their writing muscles all summer long. Try one of these prompts, selected from our writing contest archives and other literacy organizations.
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Amelia Earhart, 1937: The High and the Flighty (Time Warp Trio)
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Archaeology Field Journal
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Cinquain Poem About the Lunar Landscape
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daVinci 1503: Breaking the Codex (Time Warp Trio)
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Greek Vases Tell a Story
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Inspired by Music: Holst’s “The Planets”
Start with a Book -
Lewis and Clark, 1805 (Time Warp Trio)
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Old West, 1868: The Good, the Bad and the Goofy (Time Warp Trio)
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South Pole, 1911: Break an Egg (Time Warp Trio)
Great Websites for Kids
Dive deeper into topics of interest with these media-rich and interactive sites.
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Ancient Egypt
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Annie's Archaeology Laboratory
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Archaeology for Kids
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Archaeology: Clues from the Past
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Archaeology: Tools of the Trade
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Artifact of the Month
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Be a Martian: Help Map the Red Planet
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Birmingham Museum
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City of Materials
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Decode the Barcode
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Excavate!: Rome
$
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Go West Across America with Lewis & Clark
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Hands on History
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Historical Scene Investigation
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Inca Investigation
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KidSpy
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Mount Vernon Archaeology
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My Submarine Explorer: Creatures and Features
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Mysteries of Catalhoyuk
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National Geographic Kids
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NOVA: Ancient Worlds
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Ocean Adventures: Whale Watcher
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Prehistoric Road Trip
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Telescopes from the Ground Up
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The Fin, Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation
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The Great Dig at The British Museum
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The Oregon Trail
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Time Explorer at The British Museum
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Who Am I? A History Mystery
Great Podcasts for Kids
Listen and learn with these podcasts especially for kids. These podcasts are free and easy to listen to from any device via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher — or from Listen Notes, a podcast search engine.
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Can You Dig It
Wow in the World (NPR)
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How to Become an Astronaut
Tumble Science
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Lucy Wow
Go Kids Go
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Paleo Nerds
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The Birthday Cake Thief
Molly of Denali (PBS)
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The Explorer's Road Trip
Tumble Science Podcast
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Treasure Island 2020
Gen-Z Media/BYU Radio
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Underwater Dinosaurs and a Real Life Indiana Jones
Fun Kids Science Weekly
Educational Apps
Educational apps recommended by Common Sense Media and other trusted reviewers.
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Archaeologist: Ancient Egypt
$
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Archaeologist: Jurassic Life for Kids
$
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Britannica Kids: Ancient Egypt
$
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Britannica Kids: Ancient Rome
$
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Egyptian Hieroglyphics Decoder
$
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Expeditions
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Gem Miner: Dig Deeper
$
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Hidden Artifacts
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Journey Into the Deep
$
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Mayan Mysteries
$
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Paleontologist: Ice Age for Kids
$
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Solve the Outbreak
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The Oregon Trail
$
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The Pyramids
$
More Themed Resources
Growing Readers Tip Sheets
Simple activities for parents and kids to do together to build reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. Read online or print the PDF.
