From: Nina Lindsay <nlindsay>
Date: Sat, 04 May 1996 13:15:00 -600

My favorite children's bios, personally, have always been ones of writers. I love to read about the lives of writers whose books I've enjoyed -- it deepens my understanding of their stories, and of what it's like to write, and be a writer. As well, fiction writers' autobiographies tend to be terrific reads, just because they're written by great writers! I'm thinking particularly of Roald Dahl's BOY, Yoshiko Uchida's THE INVISIBLE THREAD ... oh, I can't think of any others just now. Also enjoyable, for similar reasons, are bios written by children's fiction writers about other people (David Kherdian's triology about his Armenian mother is fantastic), or fiction that is admitted to be heavily autobiographical, which helps develop ideas about "what is real/what is fiction", like William Sleator's ODDBALLS, or Kyoko Mori's SHIZUKO'S DAUGHTER. I guess what I'm thinking of, overall, are biographies and autobiographies that are written in a very narrative style, and can be read almost like a novel. I think books like these might be nice introductions to a non-fiction genre that is often a turn-off for kids -something to study rather than to just enjoy.

Nina Lindsay Student--School of Library & Information Studies University of Wisconsin, Madison nlindsay at mail.soemadison.wisc.edu nalindsa at macc.wisc.edu
Received on Sat 04 May 1996 02:15:00 PM CDT