North America is the third-largest continent on Earth, covering about 9.5 million square miles. It stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the warm Caribbean Sea in the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west.

The continent includes 23 countries, with the three largest being Canada, the United States, and Mexico. These three nations share most of the land, but the continent also includes the countries of Central America (like Guatemala and Panama), the islands of the Caribbean (like Jamaica and Cuba), and Greenland, the world's largest island.

North America has remarkable geographic diversity. You'll find frozen tundra in northern Canada, vast prairies in the Great Plains, towering mountain ranges like the Rockies and Sierra Madre, steamy rainforests in Central America, scorching deserts in the American Southwest and Mexico, and countless rivers, lakes, and coastlines. The continent is home to about 580 million people who speak hundreds of languages, though English, Spanish, and French are the most common.