Special Collections
District List: ELC-4 Unit 3 Biographies/Autobiographies/Memoirs
Description: Students select an author to read about and study. Some students may want to explore this genre in more depth by reading additional autobiographies and/or memoirs. #mcps
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The Invisible Thread
by Yoshiko UchidaGrowing up in California, Yoshi knew her family looked different from their neighbors. Still, she felt like an American. But everything changed when America went to war against Japan. Along with all the other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, Yoshi's family were rounded up and imprisoned in a crowded. badly built camp in the desert because they "looked like the enemy." Yoshiko Uchida grew up to be an award-winning author. This memoir of her childhood gives a personal account of a shameful episode in American history.
Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express
by Margaret K. WettererIntroduce young readers to history through the stories of both real and fictionalized people. By focusing on a single important episode that describes a historical event, these books engage readers' interests and imaginations. Written in a story format, each account relates events that really happened, often followed by a brief summary of the historical event to further explain the significance it had on history.
Brown Girl Dreaming
by Jacqueline WoodsonJaqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
A President Obama "O" Book Club pick
A Coretta Scott King Award Winner
A New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award and Newbery Honor Book
Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Another Brooklyn, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.