Biography – Autobiography- Memoir

The Children of China

Before coming to Canada, while he was still an art teacher in Beijing, Song Nan Zhang traveled from Inner Mongolia east, south, and north to find and paint unusual scenes of Chinese family life.Here are the children who grow up in the saddle with their nomadic parents or become as agile as the mountain goats they tend. A boy plays chess on the ground with his shepherd grandfather. A teenager tends her father’s pottery shop. At festivals a child plays hide-and-seek, behind yellow parasols, and stilt dancers wait to compete.

The Django

Jean longs to play the banjo, but the Django keeps on messing things up! So Jean sends the Django away, but wonders if he has lost his most precious inspiration.In this fictional story inspired by the famous jazz musician Jean “Django” Reinhardt, a young boy named Jean meets a special character called the Django. He’s fun and exciting, but he always gets Jean into trouble. Eventually the Django has to be sent away, and Jean misses him very much, until he discovers that he can still feel close to the Django every time he picks up his banjo.

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau was the world’s ambassador of the oceans. His popular TV series brought whales, otters, and dolphins right into people’s living rooms. Now, in this exciting picturebook biography, Dan Yaccarino introduces young readers to the man behind the snorkel. From the first moment he got a glimpse of what lived under the ocean’s waves, Cousteau was hooked. And so he set sail aboard the Calypso to see the sea. He and his team of scientists invented diving equipment and waterproof cameras. They made films and televisions shows and wrote books so they could share what they learned. The oceans were a vast unexplored world, and Cousteau became our guide. And when he saw that pollution was taking its toll on the seas, Cousteau became our guide in how to protect the oceans as well.

They Poured Fire On Us From The Sky: The True Story Of Three Lost Boys From Sudan

Benjamin, Alepho, and Benson were raised among the Dinka tribe of Sudan. Their world was an insulated, close-knit community of grass-roofed cottages, cattle herders, and tribal councils. The lions and pythons that prowled beyond the village fences were the greatest threat they knew. All that changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin began attacking their villages. Amid the chaos, screams, conflagration, and gunfire, five-year-old Benson and seven-year-old Benjamin fled into the dark night. Two years later, Alepho, age seven, was forced to do the same. Across the Southern Sudan, over the next five years, thousands of other boys did likewise, joining this stream of child refugees that became known as the Lost Boys. Their journey would take them over one thousand miles across a war-ravaged country, through landmine-sown paths, crocodile-infested waters, and grotesque extremes of hunger, thirst, and disease. The refugee camps they eventually filtered through offered little respite from the brutality they were fleeing. In They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin, by turn, recount their experiences along this unthinkable journey. They vividly recall the family, friends, and tribal world they left far behind them and their desperate efforts to keep track of one another. This is a captivating memoir of Sudan and a powerful portrait of war as seen through the eyes of children. And it is, in the end, an inspiring and unforgettable tribute to the tenacity of even the youngest human spirits.

The Chinese Revolution And Mao Zedong In World History

Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Revolution, rescued China from years of corrupt rule, foreign domination, and civil war. Through Mao’s tactics of guerilla warfare and peasant support, China became a Communist nation in 1949. Mao unified China under a central government, yet the legacy of his achievements — and mistakes — still lingers. By isolating China for over two decades, Mao let it lag behind the progress made in other countries. In The Chinese Revolution and Mao Zedong in World History, author Ann Malaspina relates the history of the Chinese Communist party and the People’s Republic of China during the time of Mao Zedong. Key events include the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Mao’s helping China emerge from isolation by reaching out to the United States.

Tiger Of The Snows: Tenzing Norgay: The Boy Whose Dream Was Everest

Describes the first successful climb to the top of Mount Everest by the Sherpa Tenzing Norkey and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.

Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci

A biography of Leonardo Fibonacci, the 12th century mathematician who discovered the numerical sequence named for him.

Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian

This book documents the work of a young girl, Maria Merian, who lived during the Middle Ages and disproved the theory of spontaneous generation by observing caterpillars as they spun cocoons and emerged as butterflies and moths in the spring.