Resources
Allen, JoBeth, Vinette Fabregas, Karen Hale Hankins, Gregory Hull, Linda Labbo, Hattie Spruill Lawson, Barabara Michalove et al. "PhOLKS Lore: Learning from Photographs, Families, and Children."Language Arts79, no. 4 (2002): 312-22.
The authors confirm that when students write narratives about their own lives it helps them develop personal, social, and cultural connections.
Augustine, Saint. Confessions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Noted as the first Western autobiography, St. Augustine recounts his life from sinful youth to his conversion to Christianity
Calkins, Lucy McCormick. The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994.
Lucy Calkins has provides a definitive writing resource for teacher of primary and middle school students. She characterizes how to create a positive, writing environment with the writing workshop model.
Caro, Robert A.. Means of Ascent. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
This second in the biographical series covering Lyndon Baines Johnson's life covers the highly-contested 1948 senatorial election in Texas.
Elleman, Barbara. Tomie dePaola: His Art & His Stories. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1999.
Although Tomie dePaola presents much of his life in his autobiographical work, Elleman gives a biographer's view of the artist and storyteller's life, sharing his influences, interests, and work across several genre.
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
An incredibly helpful and accessible text with chapters discussing the ways historians and biographers write using the tools of time, space and scale.
Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
This is a grand biography of the complex Cold War diplomat and ambassador who, as Gaddis shows, was both brilliant and flawed.
Leal, Dorothy J. "Digging up the past, building the future: Using book authoring to discover and showcase a community's history."The Reading Teacher57, no. 1 (2003): 56-60.
This article discusses how autobiographical writing offers teachers a way to engage students and their families in literacy learning, creating a willingness to participate in literacy activities.
Lee, Hermione. Biography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Lee, a master biographer, gives a remarkable look at the genre, providing insight into types of biographies as well as strategies, ethics and principles biographers use in their work.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. London: Penguin, 2000
A fictional biography whose subject in the beginning is a sixteen-year-old boy in the Elizabethan era and in the end, three hundred years later, is a thirty-six-year-old woman.This is a marvelous and entertaining example of the manipulation of time and space.
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