Young Adult Bibliography
Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir
ED 5502 Reading and Literature, Grades 5-12
Updated July 2014
prepared by Jane M. Gangi, PhD
Please see the A Celebration of Identity: Black Men and Boys in Children’s and Young Adult Literature slide
show: http://www.ctreading.org/journal/resources-african
Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir
Adler, David A., Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life
Ahmedi, Farah, The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky
Anderson, William, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography
Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Armstrong, Jennifer, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton
and the Endurance
Asgedom, Mawi, Of Beetles and Angels
Asher, Sandy, ed., With All My Heart, With All My Mind: Thirteen Stories about Growing up Jewish
Audubon, John James, Capturing Nature: The Writings and Art of John James Audubon
Baker, Russell, Growing Up
Bang, Molly, Nobody Particular: One Woman’s Fight to Save the Bays
Bauer, Marion Dane, A Writer’s Story: From Life to Fiction
Bausum, Ann, Dragon Bones and Dinosaur Eggs: A Photobiography of Roy Chapman Andrews
Blue, Rose, and Corinne J. Nadeen, Benjamin Banneker: Mathematician and Stargazer
Boston, Carole Weatherford, Becoming Billie Holiday
Boswell, James, Life of Johnson
Bernier-Grand, Carmen T., Poet and Politician of Puerto Rico: Don Luis Muñoz
Bretón, Marcos, Home Is Everything: The Latino Baseball Story
Brown, Christy, My Left Foot
Bruchac, Joseph, Jim Thorpe; Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself
Bulosan, Carlos, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History
Callahan, John, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot: The Autobiography of a Dangerous Man
Carroll, Rebecca, Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America
Carson, Ben, with Cecil Murphey and Nathan Aaseng, Ben Carson
Cleary, Beverly, A Girl from Yamhill; My Own Two Feet: A Memoir
Cobrun, Broughton, Triumph on Everest: A Photobiography of Sir Edmund Hilary
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood
Coleman, Evelyn, The Riches of Oseola McCarty
Collins, David R., Arthur Ashe: Against the Wind
Cooper, Cynthia, with Russ Pate, She Got Game: My Personal Odyssey
Cornell, Joseph, John Muir: My Life with Nature
Crutcher, Chris, King of the mild frontier: An ill-advised autobiography
Curie, Eve, Madame Curie
Dahl, Roald, Boy
Dillard, Annie, An American Childhood
Dorris, Michael, The Broken Cord
Douglass, Frederick, Learning to Read and Write
Duke, Patty, with Kenneth Turan, Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke
Ferris, Jeri, Native American Doctor: The Story of Susan LaFlesche Picotte
Flaming, Allen, and Kate Scowen, compilers, My Crazy Life: How I Survived My Family
Fleming, Candace, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary
Frank, Anne, The Diary of Anne Frank
Freedman, Russell, The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane; Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life;
Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery; The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle
for Equal Rights; . Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
Gage, Nicholas, Eleni
Gallagher, Hugh Gregory, FDR’s Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt’s Massive Disability—
and the Intense Efforts to Conceal It from the Public
Gallo, Don, Speaking for Ourselves: Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for Young
Adults; Speaking for Ourselves, Too: More Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for
Young Adults
Gantos, Jack, Hole in My Life
Gherman, Beverly, Ansel Adams: America’s Photographer; Norman Rockwell: Storyteller with a Brush;
Georgia O’Keefe: The “Wideness and Wonder” of Her World
Glover, Savion, and Bruce Weber, Savion: My Life in Tap
Goodall, Jane, My Life with the Chimpanzees
Grandin, Temple, Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
Greenberg, Jan, and Sandra Jordan, Frank O. Gehry: Outside In; Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist
Greenfield, Eloise, with Lessie Jones Little, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir
Hager, Tom, Linus Pauling and the Chemistry of Life
Hammer, Signe, By her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide’s Daughter
Harrison, Barbara, and Daniel Terris, A Ripple of Hope: The Life of Robert F. Kennedy; A Twilight
Struggle: The Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Haskins, Jim, Carter G. Woodson: The Man Who Put “Black” in American History; Thurgood Marshall: A
Life for Justice; Spike Lee: By Any Means Necessary
Heiligman, Deborah, Charles and Emma Darwin
Hemphill, Stephanie, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
Herrera, Nicholas, as told to Elisa Amada, & John T. Denne, High Riders, Saints and Death Cars: A
Life Saved by Art
Herriott, James, All Creatures Great and Small; All Things Bright and Beautiful
Hildebrandt, Ziporah, Marina Silva: Defending Rain Forest Communities in Brazil
hooks, bell, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
Hoose, Philip, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
Hurston, Zora Neale, Dust Tracks on a Road
Jamison, Kay Redfield, An Unquiet Mind
Jemsion, Mae, Finding Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life
Jiménez, Francisco, Breaking Through; The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
Johnson, Dolores, Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson
Kaysen, Susanna, Girl, Interrupted
Kehret, Peg, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
Keller, Helen, The Story of My Life
Kidder, Tracy, Mountains Beyond Mountains
King, Stephen, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Kingsley, Jason and Mitchell Levitz, Count Us In, Growing Up with Down Syndrome
Kingston, Maxine Hong, Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among the Ghosts
Kittredge, Mary, Barbara McClintock
Kraft, Betsy Harvey, Mother Jones: One Woman’s Fight for Labor
Kuklin, Susan, Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery
Kuusisto, Stephen, Planet of the Blind
Lansing, Alfred, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
Lawlor, Laurie, Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit
Lester, Julius. Lovesong: Becoming a Jew
Little, Jean, Stars Come out Within
Lovell, Mary S., The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Lowry, Lois, Looking Back: A Book of Memories
MacLachlan, James, Galileo Galilei: First Physicist
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Massey, Suzanne and Robert, Journey
Mathabane, Mark, Kaffir Boy
Matthews, Tom L., Always Inventing: A Photobiography of Alexander Graham Bell; Light Shining through the
Mist: A Photobiography of Dian Fossey
McKissack, Patricia, and Frederick McKissack., A Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullman
Porter
Meltzer, Milton, Mary McLeod Bethune: Voice of Black Hope; Starting from Home: A Writer’s Beginnings
Mohr, Nicholasa, Growing Up Inside the Sanctuary of My Imagination
Momaday, N. Scott, The Names: A Memoir
Moss, Allyn, Margaret Mead: Shaping a New World
Myers, Walter Dean, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali; Bad Boy: A Memoir
Nabokov, Vladimir, Speak, Memory
Nasar, Sylvia, A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in
Economics, 1994
Nelson, Marilyn, Carver, a Life in Poems
Nelson, S. D., Black Elk’s Vision: A Lakota Story
Nickens, Bessie, Walking the Log: Memories of a Southern Childhood
Niemark, Anne E., Diego Rivera: Artist of the People
Paulsen, Gary, Wood-Song
Parks, Gordon, A Choice of Weapons
Partridge, Elizabeth, John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth; Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea
Lange
Pringle, Laurence, Elephant Woman: Cynthia Moss Explores the World of Elephants; American Slave,
American Hero: York of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Rivera, Edward, Family Installments: Memories of Growing Up Hispanic
Rubin, Susan Goldman, Margaret Bourke–White: Her Pictures Were Her Life; Steven Spielberg
Salzman, Mark, Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia
Santiago, Esmeralda, When I Was Puerto Rican
Schecter, Vicky Alvear, Cleopatra Rules: The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen
Schweitzer, Albert, Out of My Life and Thought
Severance, John B., Gandhi: Great Soul; Einstein: Visionary Scientist
Severeid, Eric, Not So Wild a Dream
St. John, Jetty, Native American Scientists: Fred Begay, Wilfred F. Detclaw, Frank C. Dukepoo,
Clifton Poodry, Jerrel Yakel
Steele, Danielle, His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina
Szabo, Corrine, Sky Pioneer: A Photobiography of Amelia Earhart
Taylor, Sarah Stewart and James Sturm, Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean
Traig, Jennifer, Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood
Tudor, Tasha, and Richard Brown, The Private World of Tasha Tudor
Turner, Glennette Tilley, Lewis Howard Latimer
Walker, Alice, Langston Hughes: American Poet
Weidhorn, Manfred, Jackie Robinson
Weidt, Maryann, Oh, the Places He Went: A Story about Dr. Seuss
Welty, Eudora, One Writer’s Beginnings
Wiltshire, Stephen, Floating Cities
Winter, Jonah, Béisbol!: Latino Baseball Pioneers and Legends
Wolff, Tobias, This Boy's Life: A Memoir
Woodson, Jacqueline, ed.., A Way Out of No Way: Writing about Growing Up Black in America
Wright, Richard, Black Boy
Yep, Laurence, The Lost Garden
Zhang, Song Nan, A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night
Zhensun, Zheng, and Alice Low, A Young Painter: The Life and Paintings of Wang Yani—
China’s Extraordinary Young Artist