Steve Jenkins - Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest

HOTTEST
COLDEST
HIGHEST
DEEPEST

STEVE JENKINS

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON

For Page and Alec

Bibliography

Barrett, Norman. Deserts, Picture Library. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1989.

Bonington, Chris. Mountaineer. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990.

Butterfield, Moira. 1000 Facts About the Earth. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1992.

Clifford, Nick. Incredible Earth. New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 1996.

Johnson, Jinny, ed. What Makes the World Go Round? New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1997.

Knapp, Brian. Dune. Danbury, Conn.: Grolier Educational Corporation, 1992.

Pringle, Laurence. Rivers and Lakes. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, Inc., 1985.

Simon, Seymour. Mountains. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994.

Simon, Seymour. Volcanoes. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1988.

Copyright 1998 by Steve Jenkins

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue
South, New York, New York, 10003.

The text of this book is set in 16-point Palatino.
The illustrations are paper collage, reproduced in full color.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jenkins, Steve, 1952
Hottest, coldest, highest, deepest / Steve Jenkins.
p. cm.
Summary: Describes some of the remarkable places on earth, including the hottest,
coldest, windiest, snowiest, highest, and deepest.
RNF ISBN: 0-395-89999-0 PAP ISBN: 0-618-49488-X
GeographyJuvenile literature. [1. GeographyMiscellanea.]
I. Title.
G133.J46 1998
910dc21 97-53080 CIP AC

Manufactured in the United States of America
BVG 10 9 8

If you could visit any spot on earth, where would you go? What if you wanted to see some of the most amazing natural wonders in the world?

There are deserts that haven't seen rain for hundreds of years, and jungles where it pours almost every day. There are places so cold that even in the summer it's below freezing and spots where it's often hot enough to cook an egg on the ground. There are mountains many miles high and ocean trenches that are even deeper. You can find rivers thousands of miles long and waterfalls thousands of feet high.

Where are the very hottest and coldest, windiest and snowiest, highest and deepest places on earth? Travel the world and visit the planet's record holders.

The Nile, in Africa, is the LONGEST river in the world. It is 4,145 miles long.

The Amazon River, in South America, is not as long4,007 milesbut it is considered mightier because it carries half of all the river water in the world. The Chiang Jiang (Yangtze), in Asia (3,964 miles), and the Mississippi-Missouri, in the United States (3,710 miles), are the world's third and fourth longest rivers.

Lake Baikal, in Russia, is the world's oldest and deepest lake. The lake was formed about 25 million years ago. In one spot it is 5,134 feet deep.

The largest freshwater lake in the world is Lake Superior, one of the Great Lakes in North America (31,700 square miles), but Lake Baikal (5,500 square miles) contains more water than any other lake on earthmore than all five Great Lakes combined.

Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. Its peak is 29,028 feet above sea level.

The highest mountain in North America is Mount McKinley (also called Denali), in Alaska, at 20,320 feet. Mount Whitney, in California, is the highest peak in the continental United States. Its summit is 14,491 feet above sea level.

Mount Everest is considered the highest mountainabove sea levelin the world, but it's not really the tallest. Measured from its base on the floor of the ocean, Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, is 33,476 feet tall. Only the top 13,796 feet of Mauna Kea are above sea level.

Mount Everest rises from a plateau that is already 17,000 feet above sea level, so one would have to climb only about 12,000 feet to reach its summit. Mount McKinley, in Alaska, is almost 20,000 feet from base to summit.

The hottest spot on the planet is Al Aziziyah, Libya, in the Sahara, where a temperature of over 136 F has been recorded.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States is 134.6 F, in Death Valley, California.