Five Brave Explorers (Scholastic Reader, Level 4)

With inspiring and educational stories, Scholastic's Hello Reader seriescaters to the spectrum of reading abilities among beginning readers. MyFirst Hello Readers use basic words to reinforce phonics and sight vocabulary. The books at this level offer punch-out flash cards plus sixadditional pages of skill-building activities. Levels 1 - 4 combine a greater vocabulary and longer sentence length. Each book has an introductory letter from an education specialist guiding parents on how to help their children learn to read.

Wade Hudson was born in 1946 in Mansfield, Louisiana. He attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and during the late 1960s and early 1970s worked for a number of civil rights organizations. In addition to writing for children, Hudson has also worked as a news reporter, a sports writer, and a public relations specialist. Hudson's first book for young readers, a collaborative effort with Valerie Wilson Wesley, focused on a subject very important to him: role models for young African Americans. Since then, he has written several books in the Black Heroes series of profiles, as well as picture books, nonfiction, and plays. He has edited two critically acclaimed collections: Pass It On: African-American Poetry for Children and How Sweet the Sound: African-American Songs for Children.

Hudson lives in New Jersey with his wife and frequent collaborator, Cheryl Willis Hudson. Together they run a publishing company, Just Us Books, which they founded in order to provide African-American children with positive images of themselves in books and learning materials.