Biographies & Memoirs Books

Breaking Through

Francisco Jiménez

Amazon Price: $6.95 List Price: $6.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 96 new & used starting at $0.11

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> People of Color
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Multicultural Stories -> Hispanic & Latino

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

book review on Breaking Through 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Book Review on Breaking Through


Hi, this book Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez is a sad book. Why is it a sad book? A boy named Francisco struggles through life trying to keep his family together. He works and goes to school, also trying to keep his grades up. This book is a good book because of the Theme, believable charters, and a nice setting.

The theme is, heart breaking. It's heart breaking since a boy and his family have to face many difficult obstacles. The obstacles are not easy for Francisco and his family. They have to pay bills but they don't have any money. So the whole family except mom and the youngest ones have to work.

Besides the heart breaking theme there are nice believable charters. The charters sometimes where confused. They where confused because they didn't have money. No one to help them, and struggled to keep food on the table.

There also was a very good setting. The setting took place in many different places. Like school, fields, gas company, Twitchel and Twitchel. There are many different places. So that means that the family is all over the places.

So this book has a great theme. Wonderful setting that makes you feel like your there watching it all happing. Also nice believable charters that do things that you could relate to. So if you like heart breaking novels then this is the book for you.


The End

Editorial Review:

At the age of fourteen, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for twenty hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice. How they sustain their hope, their goodheartedness, and tenacity is revealed in this moving sequel to The Circuit. Without bitterness or sentimentality, Francisco Jiménez finishes telling the story of his youth.

Parallel Journeys

Eleanor H. Ayer, Helen Waterford, Alfons Heck

Amazon Price: $5.99 List Price: $5.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Aladdin Amazon Marketplace: 75 new & used starting at $1.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> History & Historical Fiction -> Holocaust
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Historical
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The World Must Never Forget 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The world must never forget the holocaust. Today some people espouse a theory that the nearly 12,000,000 deaths (6,000,000 of them Jews) at the hands of the Nazi party never happened. This sad, but honest, tale traces the lives of two persons who lived through that era. Helen Waterford was a Jew who experienced the atrocities first hand. Alfons Heck was a high ranking member of Hitler's youth. Both lived to tell their tales. Both met each other after the war. Both told their tales together. This book alternates chapters between the two principle characters so the reader can witness this period through eyes on both sides of the ideological conflict. This is really two books in one. Either story will challenge the mind and heart. Either one of the stories is an important read, but both placed together in this manner makes for a 5-star book. Our local middle school uses this classic in some of the literature classes. You will be richer for having read this book.

Editorial Review:

She was a young German Jew.

He was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth.

This is the story of their parallel journey through World War II.

Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck were born just a few miles from each other in the German Rhineland. But their lives took radically different courses: Helen's to the Auschwitz extermination camp; Alfons to a high rank in the Hitler Youth.

While Helen was hiding in Amsterdam, Alfons was a fanatic believer in Hitler's "master race." While she was crammed in a cattle car bound for the death camp Auschwitz, he was a teenage commander of frontline troops, ready to fight and die for the glory of Hitler and the Fatherland. This book tells both of their stories, side-by-side, in an overwhelming account of the nightmare that was WWII. The riveting stories of these two remarkable people must stand as a powerful lesson to us all.

Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager

Anonymous

Amazon Price: $5.99 List Price: $5.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperTeen Amazon Marketplace: 97 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Marriage & Family
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Culture

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 150 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Poorly-written propaganda 2 out of 5 stars.
8 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Maybe it's because I'm now past the target age for this book, and because I now know about how Dr. Sparks in all probability just makes up these books instead of using real teen journals, but I didn't believe for one blessed moment that this book was a real teen journal, nor that Annie was a real person. I was a teenager of the Nineties myself, and am a nearly-lifelong journaller, and nothing about Annie (her personality, thought process, writing style, etc.) rang true. She and everyone else in this book come across as one-dimensional stereotypes and clichés, like they're all characters in some over the top morality play or afterschool special. It's so suspicious how the teens in all of Dr. Sparks's "real-life diaries" have the exact same writing style and moral preachiness, holding rather conservative views in line with her own. I don't begrudge her her sincerely held beliefs even though they're radically different from mine, but it's just morally irresponsible to push these beliefs on impressionable teens by pretending they're from peers instead of some over-the-hill ultra-conservative psychiatrist. There are far better ways to teach teenagers to not do drugs, have unprotected sex at young ages, get eating disorders, have an affair with a teacher, or join a gang than lying to them and trying to scare them straight.

I find it hard to believe that Dr. Sparks is that respected of an adolescent shrink, since she seems so profoundly out of touch with how real teens write, behave, talk, and think. But chances are, if she'd used a real diary from a pregnant teen she had worked with, it wouldn't have had the desired holier than thou moral preachiness, anti-abortion and anti-welfare rants, childish writing style, stereotypical characters, sense of shame and guilt for something like having sex or lying to one's mother, or depiction of all teen moms as terrible parents who are just setting their kids up for a lifetime of problems unless they do the responsible thing and place the babies for adoption. Teenagers are a lot smarter, more mature, articulate, and self-aware than she gives them credit for. Real teen journallers also don't over-analyse everything, use babyish expressions worthy of a six year old, use excessive italics and exclamation points, FREQUENTLY WRITE IN ALL CAPS (those sections were so annoying, irritating, and distrating I found myself just skimming over them), feel guilty for engaging in normal teen behaviors (like going to parties or lying to one's parents about their whereabouts), or apologise for having used the occasional curse word in their own journals. Annie also acts really bipolar, the way she's all happy, excited, and bubbly one moment, then depressed, angry, frustrated, and confused the next. The way she often talks to her journal like it's an actual person, even going so far as having entire back-and-forth conversations, arguments, and tantrums with it, would also seem to suggest a serious mental problem.

While there are a few things about her character that ring true, such as how many teen girls are in abusive relationships and how many young teen moms do feel overwhelmed when the baby arrives, those details are cancelled out by all of the over the top clichés and stereotypes littered throughout the rest of the book. The "relationship" with Danny develops way too fast, for instance, and she's already acting like he's her soulmate before she even knows his name, and then thinks they have some serious relationship when they've only had a couple of dates and hung out at school a few times. As the relationship wears on, she seems to deliberately put herself in bad situations and do the most foolish things possible, like going back to him after he first tries to rape her and then actually rapes her. I could see if this were a longer-term relationship, but making excuses, blaming herself, and wanting to stay with him for the sake of some minor fling at age fourteen? I never felt anything for anyone in this book, not even at the supposedly dramatic moments, like when Annie stages some elaborate ruse to trick her mother into thinking she was hit by a car instead of raped, or when she tries to abandon her baby. The characters and situations were just too unbelievable.

A real teen journal would also have a lot more mundane chit-chat, like about hanging out with friends, a movie she just saw, schoolwork, that sort of thing, not this obsessive focus on the "problem." And where are all of the details a normal teen girl would make sure to write about, like how she got the birth control pills or just how Danny was roughing her up during sex? How are we supposed to get accurate mental images of these people and things if all we're given are generalities? Unless of course this were deliberately written as a fictional teen journal about a specific issue and not really drawn from the pages of a real teenager's journal, something she never dreamt would be published. I also found it really hard to swallow how Annie is switched to an "unwed mothers' home" in her town. Such places do still exist, but they're far and few between anymore. How convenient one of the few still in existence is in her area. And what American teen of the Nineties would actually use the term "unwed mother"? What is this, the Fifties? Annie also looks down her nose on most of the "unwed mothers" in the school, particularly because they're planning to use welfare. I found the anti-welfare rhetoric to be even more offensive than the anti-abortion rhetoric. (And how is her baby allowed to leave the hospital after only about two weeks when she's two months premature? Don't most babies born at seven months need to spend at least a month in the hospital?)

The only real thing going for this work of fiction are the supplemental sections in the back. There are quizzes to find out if one is in an abusive relationship, a Q&A on birth control and teen pregnancy (which continues with the anti-welfare rhetoric and the downright offensive view that teens are automatically sub-par parents who are putting their kids at risk for all sorts of problems if they don't do adoption), and some resources for things like STDs and rape. Funny how the writing style in this section, as well as in the author's note, is the exact same one used by Annie all throughout the book, down to the FREQUENT CAPS. So it's not totally useless. I don't know whether to feel more sad, amused, or scared that apparently many teen girls believe this book was written by one of their own instead of an elderly shrink pretending to be some whiny immature self-absorbed holier than thou teenager.

Editorial Review:

When Annie discovers she's pregnant by her boyfriend, she's devastated. She has never felt so alone. With no one she can talk to, she pours her heart out to her diary, confiding her feelings of panic, self-doubt, and the desperate hope that some day she can turn her life around. She decides she wants to keep her baby and dreams of loving and caring for this little person. But after the baby is born, it's in her diary that she faces the agonizing question: Can she really raise this child on her own?

A Summer Life

Gary Soto

Amazon Price: $6.50 List Price: $6.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Laurel Leaf Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $2.29

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Literary
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( S ) -> Soto, Gary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Little Boy, A Big World 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I read Gary Soto's "A Summer Life" while I was writing my first book in order to educate myself in the creation of vibrant, evocative scenes that come out of ordinary, every day experiences. For example, in Soto's essay, "The Shirt," he shows how the tragic, post-Korean War existence of Uncle Shorty seemed magical and special to a young Soto who covets his uncle's shirt: "I used to slip it on when he was asleep, and at the age of five I knew the smell of a man who went and came back from war....It was the shape of muscle, the anger of a tattoo panther hiding behind cotton, the hair in the collar, the small hole where a bullet could have entered and exited without his dying." Or, with the simple first line of "The Weather," Soto can set the stage for the mysteries of climate: "January doesn't show its true face until you can scratch a cold window with a finger." This little book will make you smile (and sometimes wince) as it brings back your own personal memories of growing up. This is a wonderful collection that offers everyone, including new writers, a chance to enjoy and learn from beautifully crafted essays.

Editorial Review:

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold," the taps of his shoes and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles," his worn tennies smelling of "summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of basesall." The child's world is made up of small things--small, very important things.

Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare

Peter Vennema

Amazon Price: $7.99 List Price: $7.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperTrophy Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $2.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Literary
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Performing Arts
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

William Shakespeare was the son of a glovemaker, a small-town boy with a grammar school education. Yet he grew up to become the greatest English-speaking playwright in the world. Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare is both his story and that of a great art rediscovered in the modern world.

Drama had been forgotten since the days of ancient Greece, but it reemerged in Elizabethan London with the building of the first modern theater. Its impact can still be imagined today. There were the theaters, open to the weather and featuring neither sets nor curtains, but equipped with dramatic special effects. There were the companies of actors--the leading men, the comedians, the boys who played women's roles--and the playwrights who gave them all lines to say.

Best of all, there was William Shakespeare, who rubbed shoulders with noblemen and royalty as well as with the rowdy crowds at the foot of the stage. He was suspected of involvement in a treasonous rebellion, and his last play literally brought down the house when cannon effects set fire to the famous Globe theater and it burned to the ground.

Award-winning collaborators Diane Stanley and Peter Vennema have once again created a feast of words and pictures to celebrate the life of a remarkable person from the pages of history: William Shakespeare, a man for all time."

Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! (Unforgettable Americans)

Jean Fritz

Amazon Price: $5.99 List Price: $5.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Putnam Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $1.20

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> Political
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> United States
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Unacceptable historical errors 3 out of 5 stars.
12 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Although Jean Fritz is an award winning author of history books, she makes some serious errors in this book making it unacceptable for school libraries. I love her writing style and the way she relates many humorous stories of Teddy Roosevelt's childhood, but when she relates his western adventures her historical research is seriously lacking. She refers to how the Sioux Indians killed 10,000 buffalo a feat which would have been impossible since the tribe was totally defeated, low in numbers, and relegated to reservations in the time period she described, the late 1880s. White buffalo hunters, not Native Americans slaughtered buffalo for their tongues and left their carcasses to rot. The Sioux had a tremendous respect for nature and only hunted a few buffalo at a time, just enough to feed their tribal group.

These egregious fallacies make this book totally unacceptable. Children should be given historical sources that are accurate, not ones that perpetuate myths. It is unfortunate since the rest of the book is wonderful and with some judicious editing, this would be one of the best children's biographies of Roosevelt.

Morning Star of the Reformation (Light Line Ser.)

Andy Thomson

Amazon Price: $8.99 List Price: $8.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: BJU Press Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $4.60

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> European
Subjects -> Children's Books -> History & Historical Fiction -> Fiction -> Medieval
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Religions -> Fiction -> Christian

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

good to read when studing Luther/Reformation 3 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I recommend this book for students ages 10-13 who are studying Martin Luther and the Reformation. (I actually read it with my 9 year old, who is pretty bright. But I don't think it will hold the attention of most 9 year olds.) The book gives you a real good feel for how it was for the clergy in this time period and the tension that existed, and continued to be a problem, in a revolutionary time period for Christianity. I did not really understand the historical difference between Protestantism and Catholicism until I read this book, which is historical fiction. It is a great supplement to your textbook reading, which doesn't really give you a feel for how things were for individuals entering the clergy and sympathetic to the reformers' cause. I give it 3 stars because it took a little while to get into the story, but it is worth it, and it isn't too long to get through it. It will also explain the important role John Wycliffe played in this time period.

Editorial Review:

When young John of Wycliffe arrives at Oxford University, he finds it a fascinating and perilous place. With his friend, Sebastian Ayleton, John experiences the terrible plague called the "Pestilence" (the Black Death), and he becomes involved in clashes between university factions as well as riots among the townspeople. Whenever he can find time away from his studies, John's favorite place is the inn of the Kicking Pony. There he and his companions discuss the political and religious issues of the day, and it is with his friends that he first shares his growing vision of an English Bible for all Englishmen to read. In the darkness of medieval England, John's pursuit of truth gleams like a solitary star: the morning star that promises the sunrise to come. He paved the way for the theologians of the next century and opened hearts in preparation for the great Reformation itself.

Diary of an Anorexic Girl

Morgan Menzie

Amazon Price: $10.39 List Price: $12.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Thomas Nelson Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $4.29

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> Eating Disorders
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Recovery -> Drug Dependency
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Disorders & Diseases -> Diabetes

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Talk About Real!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Morgan Menzie's book was the first diary of an eating disorder I read, and is the reason why I continue to read more ED books. She unlike many ED authors talked about things other that just her eating disorder, such as relationships with friends, family and boyfriends. It's not a book that's all about anorexia but does emphasize more so than other subjects in her diary.

In her book, I believe she cover about mmm... three or four years, I really can't remember. Anyway it's a long period of time. One thing that she does that annoys the heck out of me is that she'll skip a whole month of entries but I guess that's the author's way of cutting out insignificant things.

Basically a girl named Blythe, which I think maybe be her middle name, becomes anorexic in middle school because of a friend. On of her friends begins to loose weight and Blythe decides she wants to loose to. But it goes beyond loosing weight it becomes a desire for thinness, and a fear of food.

Another thing I love about this book is Morgan keeps it so real. She said one of the- the truest thing EVER published about our human ways. It's on page 49 and is the...um... 4th paragraph I believe since the book is copy written I don't want to post it without permission. But what she says in that paragraph is so overwhelmingly true that I had to put down the book and think about my life. Although what she says is completely irrelevant to her eating disorder I couldn't write this review without reference to that paragraph.

Would I recommend it? Heck yeah! To anyone, even if you're not anorexic or never have been, even if you think the disease is stupid, anyone should get this book. Recoverees, havebeens, thinking about its and neverwillbees, get the book. You'll understand what it's like to have the disease for this one girl and may have a whole new outlook on anorexia.

Editorial Review:

Morgan Menzie takes readers through a harrowing but ultimately hopeful and inspiring account of her eating disorder. Her amazing story is told through the journals she kept during her daily struggle with this addiction and disease. Her triumphs and tragedies all unfold together in this beautiful story of God's grace.

Features include: daily eating schedule, journal entries, prayers to God, poems, and what she wished she knew at the time. It's the true story of victory over a disease that is killing America's youth.

Duchessina: A Novel of Catherine de'Medici (Young Royals)

Carolyn Meyer

Amazon Price: $12.75 List Price: $17.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harcourt Children's Books Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $3.18

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> European
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Royalty
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Girls & Women -> Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Courtesy of Teens Read Too 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Catherine de'Medici, Duchessina, grows up in a palace in Florence where her family rules the city. When her family falls out of power, she must flee. She becomes imprisoned within the walls of convents for her protection against the angry mob that calls for her death. At the first convent, the nuns make their hatred of her family no secret.

The Duchessina lives in misery, enduring the pain as best she can under the circumstances. Finally, the tides change and her family once again controls not only Florence but the papacy as well. The Pope, her old guardian, calls for her to live in Rome until he can make arrangements for her future.

As one of the richest woman in Europe, the Pope intends to make an advantageous marriage. He marries the Duchessina off to the Dauphin of France. The Dauphin cares little for his new wife and Catherine's misery continues, but she creates advantages to help ease her pain and eventually finds contentment.

A wonderful outlook on the creation of Madame Serpent, remembered in history as the "girl who endured." Carolyn Meyer takes another historical princess and adds strong characters and rich details to spin a delightful tale.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Rummel

Editorial Review:

Young Catherine de' Medici is the sole heiress to the entire fortune of the wealthy Medici family. But her life is far from luxurious. After a childhood spent locked away behind the walls of a convent, she joins the household of the pope, where at last she can be united with her true love. But, all too soon, that love is replaced with an engagement to a boy who is cold and aloof. It soon becomes clear that Catherine will need all the cunning she can muster to command the respect she deserves as one of France's most powerful queens.

Includes a family tree.

Richard Wright and the Library Card

William Miller

Amazon Price: $7.95 List Price: $7.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lee & Low Books Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $3.78

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Biographies -> United States
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Multicultural Stories -> African-American
Subjects -> Children's Books -> People & Places -> Social Issues -> Prejudice & Racism -> Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Richard Wright, African American author of Black Boy and Native Son, grew up in the segregated South of the 1920s. His formal education ended after he completed the ninth grade, but gaining access to the public library with the help of a white coworker opened up a new world of books for him, eventually inspiring him to become a writer. Richard Wright and the Library Card is a fictionalized account of this powerful story, deftly adapted by William Miller from a scene in Black Boy.

Miller--a professor of African American literature and author of the critically acclaimed Frederick Douglass: The Last Day of Slavery, A House by the River, and Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree-- masterfully builds suspense, as readers wonder how the young African American will quench his thirst for books without being busted by the local white librarian. Wright's story is perfectly complemented by the work of Gregory Christie, winner of the 1997 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award for Palm of My Heart. (Ages 5 to 9)