Biographies & Memoirs Books - Page 6

Almost Lost: The True Story Of An Anonymous Teenager's Life On The Streets (Avon Flare Book)

Beatrice Sparks

Amazon Price: $13.25 List Price: $13.25 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Topeka Bindery

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Pathetic! 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

As a fifteen-year-old, I found this book patronizing and insulting. Sammy, a fifteen-year-old, is amazingly dense and unable to verbalize simple thoughts and emotions. It was a class assignment to read this book in English class, and our teacher swore it was a 'real' book. It is obviously total ish. What fifteen-year-old uses words like 'gobbly goop poop', especially an ex-gangbanger? Can you imagine Tookie Williams saying that?

This book is also grossly oversimplified. Sam 'claps his hands over his ears and yells, "I won't talk about him! I won't!" When Ms Sparks inquires about his father. If somebody doesn't want to talk to a psychologist, which Sam apparently doesn't, then wouldn't he just tell her exactly what she wants to hear, get the hell out of the office, and go on his merry way?

And the part where the psychologist talks to him about the fact that millions of teens suffer depression, he is shocked and exclaims, "I thought I was the only one who felt like that!" Well, it all reads like one long PSA.

Editorial Review:

Who in his right mind wants to talk to a shrink? I don't want to talk about anything. I don't want to feel anything, taste anything ... or anything. The lyrics "just dying to die" run around in my brain day and night...

Fifteen-year-old Sam is in pain. He comes to the therapist's office unwillingly, angry, depressed, and filled with guilt over his own self-destructive behavior. He is being drawn deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair from which he sees no way out.

The Road Back

This is the Real-life story of Sam's Recovery, told from tapes of his therapy sessions. It tells what drove him to leave home, how he survived on the street, and why he was desperate to escape from the brutality of the gang that had become his "family" and from the torment of his own self-loathing. For every teen who has experienced the pain and loneliness of a no-way-out darkness, and for all those who love them, here is the light that can lead the way back.

Richard Wright and the Library Card

William Miller, Gregory Christie

Amazon Price: $7.95 List Price: $7.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lee & Low Books

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

How young Richard Wright got to read books from the library 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Richard Wright is an African American author best known for his novel "Native Son" and his autobiographical work "Black Boy." In "Richard Wright and the Library Card" author William Miller fictionalizes a story from the latter work that tells of how Wright was inspired to become a writer. Growing up in the Mississippi of the segregated South of the 1920s, Wright was only allowed to go to school through the 9th grade. His mother had taught him to read by using the newspaper and Richard read everything he could find. At the age of 17 Wright traveled north to Memphis, where he got a job sweeping the floors and doing other jobs in the office of an optician. Wanting to check out books at the local library Wright is told he cannot do so because he is black. The only things he can read are old books and newspapers that he finds in the trash. But then, with the help of a white co-worker, Wright is able to come up with a strategy for circumventing the rules.

Miller takes some liberties with Wright's original description of these events in his life, but for the most part these changes simply reinforce the elements of the story; for example, the librarian is suspicious of Richard until he lies and says that he cannot read, at which point the librarian laughs. The detail is not in "Black Boy," but certainly having the librarian laugh reinforces both the irony and the injustice of Wright have to lie in order to gain access to books to read. For that matter the language in the story is made appropriate for young readers, who do not need to hear the epithets in use at the time to understand the prejudice Wright and other African-Americans faced in the segregated South. Miller also does a nice job of setting up the anticipation of young readers who, even if they know nothing of Wright's literary accomplishments, quickly realize that he is going to be able to get to read some books and have to wonder how he is going to do it and beat the oppressive system of segregation.

This volume has the advantage of wonderful impressionistic illustrations by Gregory Christie that pointedly capture the contrast between the face that young Richard shows to the suspicious white librarian, and the real face that comes alive when he is able to read books. This book is appropriate for young readers (Grades 2-5 in terms of interest level and Grades 2-3 for reading level) and emphasizes the wrongness of treating people as different in that Wright's co-worker, Jim Falk, is also considered an outside because he is Catholic, although clearly the Jim Crow laws are the implicit target of condemnation in this book. Wright considers every page of each book to be "a ticket to freedom," and when the young Richard leaves Memphis to go to Chicago and a new life, hopefully young readers will look forward to actually reading some of the important books that he wrote. But at this point the main benefit will be the sense of how things were different back then; I wonder how many young readers could look at the cover and the title of this book and guess correctly the story found inside.

Editorial Review:

As a boy in the segregated South, author Richard Wright was determined to borrow books from the public library. His story vividly illustrates the power of determination in making a dream into reality.

Cool Melons-Turn to Frogs!: The Life and Poems of Issa

Matthew Gollub

Amazon Price: $14.36 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lee & Low Books

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Japanese
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A plum tree in bloom 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Recommended to me by a school librarian, this book was a sweet delight which I read to my child thinking to encourage her to enjoy poetry. We both enjoyed this book and its wonderful illustrations of Japanese life, learning about the sad life of Issa and what is behind some of his poems, especially as haiku are not as simple as they appear on the surface. While the story may be a bit intense for very young children, the book accomplishes its intention of providing an interesting and eye-catching introduction to haiku and the sensitivity to feeling and experience that helps create the art of poetry. It also carries an underlying message of how one can not only persevere through mistreatment and adversity but keep a caring and uplifted spirit. LOVED the author's informational notes at the end.
Also see Grass Sandals : The Travels of Basho

Editorial Review:

Born in 1763 on a farm in central Japan, Issa began writing haiku as a young child. Matthew Gollub has integrated the story of Issa's life and selections of his best-known work with Kazuko Stone's visual interpretations in the form of whimsical watercolors. Full color.

The Life and Death of Crazy Horse

Russell Freedman

Amazon Price: $24.95 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Holiday House

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

Russell Freedman Tells An Exciting Story 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The book, The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, tells the story of the American West from a Indian's point of view. Crazy Horse and his people, the Sioux Indians, are living peacefully alone in Indian Country (Montana, and Little Big Horn Battlefield). Crazy Horse loves the wilderness he lives in and the horses he lives with. Then the White people come on the Oregon Trail and take the best campsites and game. The U.S. Army keeps pushing the Indians off their own land. This leads to a lot of fighting and Crazy Horse manages to kill many of their soldiers. If you like adventure in the wilderness, you should read this book!

A great story about a great Native American 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This excelent story about adventure and courage takes place in the great vast american west where Crazy Horse and his tribe The Sioux Indians peacfuly live. But sadly when americans in the eastern citys want to move west the U.S goverment makes the Sioux Indeans move from there western home land. The book shows the great worior Crazy horse was from child hood to adult hood to when he is killed. A must read for history fans.

Editorial Review:

True to the modest spirit of the great Oglala Sioux warrior.

The Life and Death of Crazy Horse

Russell Freedman

Amazon Price: $24.95 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Holiday House

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Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> Staff Favorites

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

Russell Freedman Tells An Exciting Story 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The book, The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, tells the story of the American West from a Indian's point of view. Crazy Horse and his people, the Sioux Indians, are living peacefully alone in Indian Country (Montana, and Little Big Horn Battlefield). Crazy Horse loves the wilderness he lives in and the horses he lives with. Then the White people come on the Oregon Trail and take the best campsites and game. The U.S. Army keeps pushing the Indians off their own land. This leads to a lot of fighting and Crazy Horse manages to kill many of their soldiers. If you like adventure in the wilderness, you should read this book!

A great story about a great Native American 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This excelent story about adventure and courage takes place in the great vast american west where Crazy Horse and his tribe The Sioux Indians peacfuly live. But sadly when americans in the eastern citys want to move west the U.S goverment makes the Sioux Indeans move from there western home land. The book shows the great worior Crazy horse was from child hood to adult hood to when he is killed. A must read for history fans.

Editorial Review:

True to the modest spirit of the great Oglala Sioux warrior.