Best Teen & Young Adult Literary Biographies Books
Here you will get Best Teen & Young Adult Literary Biographies Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood
Author: by Gary Paulsen
English
368 pages
0374314152
A riveting, hopeful survival story. Publishers Weekly, starred reviewA mesmerizing memoir from a living literary legend, giving readers a new perspective on the origins of Gary Paulsen’s famed survival stories. His name is synonymous with high-stakes wilderness survival stories. Now, beloved author Gary Paulsen portrays a series of life-altering moments from his turbulent childhood as his own original survival story.
If not for his summer escape from a shockingly neglectful Chicago upbringing to a North Woods homestead at age five, there never would have been a Hatchet. Without the encouragement of the librarian who handed him his first book at age thirteen, he may never have become a reader.
And without his desperate teenage enlistment in the Army, he would not have discovered his true calling as a storyteller. An entrancing account of grit and growing up, perfect for newcomers and lifelong fans alike, this is the famed author at his rawest and most real.
2. Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir
Author: by Nikki Grimes
Wordsong
English
336 pages
A Michael L.Printz Honor BookA Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor BookA Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Honor BookArnold Adoff Poetry Award for TeensSix Starred Reviews – Booklist BCCB The Horn Book Publishers Weekly School Library Connection Shelf AwarenessA Booklist Best Book for Youth * A BCCB Blue Ribbon * A Horn Book Fanfare Book * A Shelf Awareness Best Children’s Book * Recommended on NPR’s “Morning Edition” by Kwame Alexander”This powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow.”-Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak and Shout”[A] testimony and a triumph.”-Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way DownIn her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse.
Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night – and discovered the magic and impact of writing.
3. Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
Author: by Melanie Rehak
B007PRF0LU
September 5, 2006
English
The true story behind the iconic fictional detective is a fascinating chapter in the history of publishing (The Seattle Times). An Edgar Award Winner for Best Biography and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year The plucky titian-haired sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930and eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women’s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American culture.
As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers’ lives. Here, in a narrative with all the page-turning pace of Nancy’s adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew?
And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon? The brainchild of children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over her father’s business empire as CEO.
4. Bad Boy: A Memoir
Author: by Walter Dean Myers
0064472884
Amistad
English
A classic memoir that’s gripping, funny, and ultimately unforgettable from the bestselling former National Ambassador of Books for Young People. A strong choice for summer readingan engaging and powerful autobiographical exploration of growing up a so-called “bad boy” in Harlem in the 1940s.
As a boy, Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciouslyhe would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys’ teasing.
He aspired to be a writer (and he eventually succeeded). But as his hope for a successful future diminished, the values he had been taught at home, in school, and in his community seemed worthless, and he turned to the streets and to his books for comfort.
Don’t miss this memoir by New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers, one of the most important voices of our time.
5. Apple: (Skin to the Core)
Author: by Eric Gansworth
Levine Querido
English
352 pages
National Book Award LonglistTIME’s 10 Best YA and Children’s Books of 2020NPR’s Best Book of 2020Shelf Awareness’s Best Books of 2020Publishers Weekly’s Big Indie Books of FallAmazon’s Best Book of the MonthAICL Best YA Books of 2020CSMCL Best Multicultural Children’s Books of 2020PRAISE”Stirring..
Raw and moving.”TIME”Beautiful imagery and with words that soar and scald.”The Buffalo News”Easily one of the best books to be published in 2020. The kind of book bound to save lives.” LitHub”A powerful narrative about identity and belonging.”Paste MagazineFOUR STARRED REVIEWS “Timely and important.” Booklist, starred review “Searing yet dryly funny.” The Bulletin, starred review “Exceptional.” Shelf-Awareness, starred review “Captivating.” School Library Journal, starred reviewThe term “Apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country.
It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.” In APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE), Eric Gansworth tells his story, the story of his familyof Onondaga among Tuscarorasof Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds.
6. Going Solo
Author: by Roald Dahl
Puffin Books
English
240 pages
From the bestselling author Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG comes an autobiographical account of his exploits as a World War II pilot! Superb stories, daring deeds, fantastic adventures! Learn all about Roald Dahl’s encounters with the enemy, his worldwide travels, the life-threatening injuries he sustained in a plane accident, and the rest of his sometimes bizarre, often unnerving, and always colorful adventures.
Told with the same irresistible appeal that has made Roald Dahl one of the world’s best-loved writers, Going Solo brings you directly into the action and into the mind of this fascinating man.
7. Woodsong
Author: by Gary Paulsen
English
144 pages
1416939393
A LIFE AS EXCITING AS FICTION Gary Paulsen, three-time Newbery Honor author, is no stranger to adventure. He has flown off the back of a dogsled and down a frozen waterfall to near disaster, and waited for a giant bear to seal his fate with one slap of a claw.
He has led a team of sled dogs toward the Alaskan Mountain Range in an Iditarod – the grueling, 1,180-mile dogsled race – hallucinating from lack of sleep, but he determined to finish. Here, in vivid detail, Paulsen recounts several of the remarkable experiences that shaped his life and inspired his award-winning writing.
A School Library Journal Best Book A Booklist Editors’ Choice
8. Hole in My Life
Author: by Jack Gantos
Square Fish
English
224 pages
From the Newbery Awardwinning author of Dead End in Norvelt, this is a memoir about becoming a writer the hard way. A Printz Honor and Sibert Honor book. In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer looking for adventure, cash for college tuition, and a way out of a dead-end job.
For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly agreed to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with a ton of hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents caught up with them.
For his part in the conspiracy, Gantos was sentenced to serve up to six years in prison. In Hole in My Life, this prizewinning author of over thirty books for young people confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the end of his own youth.
On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one crazed moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a criminal, and his time in prison. But running just beneath the action is the story of how Gantosonce he was locked up in a small, yellow-walled cellmoved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how dedicating himself more fully to the thing he most wanted to do helped him endure and ultimately overcome the worst experience of his life.
9. The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano
Author: by Ann Cameron
Yearling
English
160 pages
Kidnapped at the age of 11 from his home in Benin, Africa, Olaudah Equiano spent the next 11 years as a slave in England, the U.S., and the West Indies, until he was able to buy his freedom. His autobiography, published in 1789, was a bestseller in its own time.
Cameron has modernized and shortened it while remaining true to the spirit of the original. It’s a gripping story of adventure, betrayal, cruelty, and courage. In searing scenes, Equiano describes the savagery of his capture, the appalling conditions on the slave ship, the auction, and the forced labor….
Kids will read this young man’s story on their own; it will also enrich curriculum units on history and on writing.
10. Popular: How a Geek in Pearls Discovered the Secret to Confidence
Author: by Maya Van Wagenen
Speak
English
272 pages
New York Times BestsellerA breakout teen author explores the true meaning of popularity and how to survive middle school in this hysterically funny, touchingly honest contemporary memoir. I was inspired by [Maya’s] journey and made a point of saving a copy of Popular’ for my sister, who starts middle school this fall.
Maybe if I had read it when I was her age, it could have saved me from a world of hurt, or at least put that world in perspective. Maude Apatow, New York Times Book ReviewCan curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help a shy girl become popular?
Maya Van Wagenen is about to find out. Stuck near the bottom of the social ladder at pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren’t paid to be here, Maya has never been popular. But before starting eighth grade, she decides to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell.
The real-life results are hilarious, painful, and filled with unexpected surprises. Told with humor and grace, Maya’s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence, along with a better understanding of what it means to be popular.
11. Guts
Author: by Gary Paulsen
English
148 pages
0440407125
Guess what – Gary Paulsen was being kind to Brian. In Guts, Gary tells the real stories behind the Brian books, the stories of the adventures that inspired him to write Brian Robeson’s story: working as an emergency volunteer; the death that inspired the pilot’s death in Hatchet; plane crashes he has seen and near-misses of his own.
He describes how he made his own bows and arrows, and takes readers on his first hunting trips, showing the wonder and solace of nature along with his hilarious mishaps and mistakes. He shares special memories, such as the night he attracted every mosquito in the county, or how he met the moose with a sense of humor, and the moose who made it personal.
There’s a handy chapter on “Eating Eyeballs and Guts or Starving: The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition.” Recipes included. Readers may wonder how Gary Paulsen survived to write all of his books – well, it took guts.
12. Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein
Author: by Lita Judge
English
320 pages
1626725004
Both timely and terrifying. Gregory Macguire, New York Timesbestselling author of WickedPairing free verse with over three hundred pages of black-and-white watercolor illustrations, Mary’s Monster is a unique and stunning biography of Mary Shelley, the pregnant teenage runaway who became one of the greatest authors of all time.
Legend is correct that Mary Shelley began penning Frankenstein in answer to a dare to write a ghost story. What most people don’t know, however, is that the seeds of her novel had been planted long before that night. By age nineteen, she had been disowned by her family, was living in scandal with a married man, and had lost her baby daughter just days after her birth.
Mary poured her grief, pain, and passion into the powerful book still revered two hundred years later, and in Mary’s Monster, author/illustrator Lita Judge has poured her own passion into a gorgeous book that pays tribute to the life of this incredible author.
A 2019 NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade BookA 2019 Amelia Bloomer Project BookThis title has Common Core connections.
13. Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood
Author: by Ibtisam Barakat
Square Fish
English
208 pages
“When a war ends it does not go away,” my mother says.”It hides inside us … Just forget!” But I do not want to do what Mother says …I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war.
With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life in the Middle East as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet.
This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home. Transcending the particulars of politics, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood is an illuminating and timely book that provides a telling glimpse into a part of the Middle East that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.
14. Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories
Author: by Dawn Metcalf
HarperTeen
English
384 pages
Don’t miss this excellent catalyst for one-on-one and classroom discussion. Today’s top authors for teens and young people come together to share their stories about bullyingas bystanders, as victims, and as the bullies themselvesin this moving and deeply personal collection.Lauren Oliver, R.L.
Stine, Ellen Hopkins, Carolyn Mackler, Kiersten White, Mo Willems, Jon Scieszka, Lauren Kate, and many more contributed 70 heartfelt and empathetic stories from each corner of the schoolyard. In addition, Dear Bully includes resources for teens, educators, and parents, and suggestions for further reading.
For those working to support social and emotional learning and anti-bullying programs, Dear Bully can help foster reflection and empathy.You are not alone.
15. Lighter Than My Shadow
Author: by Katie Green
English
516 pages
1941302416
“A gripping graphic novel about a woman’s battle with eating disorders.” The GuardianLike most kids, Katie was a picky eater. She’d sit at the table in silent protest, hide uneaten toast in her bedroom, listen to parental threats that she’d have to eat it for breakfast.
But in any life, a set of circumstances can collide, and normal behavior can soon shade into something sinister, something deadly. Lighter Than My Shadow is a hand-drawn story of struggle and recovery, a trip into the black heart of a taboo illness, an exposure of those who are so weak that they prey on the weak, and an inspiration to anybody who believes in the human power to endure and to eventually find happiness.
16. Before They Were Authors: Famous Writers as Kids
Author: by Elizabeth Haidle
Etch/Clarion Books
English
64 pages
This exciting debut in graphic novel format tells the childhood stories of literary legends including Maya Angelou, Roald Dahl, and Sandra Cisnernos. Perfect for fans of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls and Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World.
What makes a writer?What inspires them? Where do their stories come from? Striking illustrations and a popular graphic novel format bring to life this anthology of literary legends and their childhoods. Featuring beloved authors such as Maya Angelou, C.S.
Lewis, Gene Luen Yang and J.K. Rowling, these stories capture the childhood triumphs, failures, and inspirations that predated their careers. Children ages ten and up will see themselves in these humanized portraits and wonder if they, too, might have it in them to write.
A celebration of creativity, this collective graphic biography is sprinkled throughout with writing wisdom and inspiring quotes.
