From: linnea hendrickson <lhendr>
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 22:06:00 -0700

The biography discussion is raising many fascinating issues, several of which have long concerned me. I agree with those who say that autobiography is no more trustworthy than biography, although I enjoy reading both. In adult books in recent years the trend has seemd to be toward extremely long, extremely detailed biographies. But, I'm concerned about all the biographies aimed at beginning readers, as Angelica is, and I'd be interested in knowing what other teachers and school and public librarians and think about these and their usefulness. My inclination with most nonfiction is to buy books aimed at higher level readers, hoping that the children will stretch a bit, and that good writing will help to carry them along. I also know that in my school, at least, the biggest emphasis in the K-2 years is on literacy and math skills, and that science and social science topics tend to be approached through large thematic units. I do like picture book biographies aimed at young children, such as Kathleen Krull's _Wilma Unlimited_ and David Adler's _Lou Gehrig, the Luckiest Man_. I also often read aloud to my classes from books like Freedman's _Lincoln: A Photobiography_ and from such autobiographies as Cynthia Rylant's _But I'll Be Back Again: An Album_ and from Roald Dahl's
_Boy_.

I often introduce biography to my college students by saying that I think the world is divided into two kinds of people, those who read biographies and those who don't. The non-biography-readers always are the majority, but I find the reasons why the biography readers read them fascinating. I'm one of the biography readers, myself, and it started in elementary school where the Childhood of Famous Americans books were kept in a bookcase in the principal's office. I was allowed to check out only one at a time, and I think I read the entire set, starting with biographies of women (there weren't very many!), then of people I'd heard of, and finally of people I'd never heard of. I'm amazed that these books are still being published in new editions and being sold to libraries, since they are so highly fictionalized, idealized, and moralistic. I haven't read one in years, and should probably look at the new versions to see if they are the same.

I think what I was looking for in these books was some kind of model for my own life, and because I never found one that satisfied me, I kept on reading. It was only a few years ago that I realized something else about these books. The emphasis in these books is on the childhood of the famous person (the premise being, apparently, that the seeds of greatness are evident even in childhood). Whatever the person accomplished in adult life is then glossed over in the last chapter or two. The notion that I took away from all this was that the most interesting part of a person's life is childhood, and that after one is grown up everything gets boring. nothing much happens, and then you die. In retrospect, I wonder if this message has not had some subconscious hold on me throughout my life, explaining why after many years in various occupations, I finally found myself immersed in the world of children's literature, and of childhood (where everything interesting happens, constrast to an adulthood squeezed into two chapters).


What is it we want children to get from reading biographies? I don't think the message I got from The Childhoods of Famous Americans is necessarily a good one. I do know that history means more when there are individual people involved that I know something about. I also think the study of human character is fascinating. I suppose that like all literature, biography can be both a window and a mirror, giving us glimpses into worlds we would never see otherwise, and reflecting back to us insights about ourselves.

Linnea

Linnea Hendrickson Lhendr at unm.edu http://www.unm.edu/~lhendr
Received on Fri 03 Nov 2000 11:06:00 PM CST