Connie Goldsmith

Official Website

Selected Works

teen nonfiction

Running on Empty: sleeplessness in American teens

Understanding Suicide: a National Epidemic

Suicide is among the top three causes of death for young people ages 15 to 24. In fact, it is a global epidemic, claiming 41,000 lives per year in the United States alone. Suicide touches people of all ages—from those who consider and attempt suicide to those who lose a loved one to suicide. Yet silence often surrounds these deaths and makes the suicide phenomenon difficult to understand. What drives people to take their lives? How can suicides be prevented?

Dogs at War: Military Canine Heroes

Read interviews about how dogs are selected and trained. Learn how military working dogs find explosives and enemy soldiers in war zones. And read first-hand accounts from soldiers who have adopted their dogs.

Bombs over Bikini: the world's first nuclear disaster

Bombs over Bikini named a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2014; winner of the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for California/Hawaii; recommended by the National Science Teachers Association; rated as outstanding by the Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California; a Bank Street College Best Book. Learn how the U.S. nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands after WWII changed the lives of the islanders forever.

Battling Malaria: On the Front Lines Against a Global Killer

Malaria kills a child every 30 seconds. Learn about this deadly disease caused by parasites.

Superbugs Strike Back: When Antibiotics Fail

Many bacterial infections are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics that once readily cured them.

Dogs at War: Military Canine Heroes

Learn the true story of military working dogs and their handlers: America's secret weapon.

Dogs at War audio clip (2.6 MB)

Listen to audio clip of opening paragraphs. Recorded by Joana Garcia, https://www.acx.com/narrator?p=A2PYAWL9RX9O6X

Dogs at War trailer

See the "Dogs at War" trailer produced by educator Jim Bentley and his student filmmakers @Curiosity_Films:

Six legs. Four eyes. Two hearts. One team. A military working dog (MWD) and its handler live together, eat together, play together, sleep together, and risk their lives for each other every day while in a war zone. Experts say each military dog saves between one hundred fifty to two hundred soldiers during its working life by sniffing out concealed explosives and other weapons and by alerting its handler to hidden enemy soldiers.