Dave Bigelow

Just Jamie is an animated world of sleep-overs, phone tag and girl talk. Twelve-year-old Jamie's number-one priority is hanging out with her two life-long friends. It's her mixed-up place in the world that has Jamie always wondering, always searching. With her audience as her confidante, Jamie expresses her innermost "stuff," making her an expert guide to the muddled-up reality of being 12.

NASA launches its most ambitious hunt for traces of life on Mars, landing a car-sized rover in a rocky, ancient river delta. The rover will stow samples for possible return to Earth and test technology that may pave the way for human travel to Mars.

Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place-a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid...