What Makes A Book A Biography

Linking Picture Book Biographies to National Content Standards

Presenting beautifully illustrated picture book biographies, this book pairs narrative nonfiction biographies rich in language and illustrations with national content standards in the social studies, science, and the arts. The current focus on promoting nonfiction reading at all ages has brought to attention the value of narrative nonfiction in the form of new picture book biographies. But which of the thousands of these types of titles will have maximum teaching impact and be interesting to students? This book identifies the "best of the best" in new picture book biographies that are rich in language and illustrations and best support national content standards in science, social studies, and the arts. Written by authors with a combined experience of more than 50 years in teaching as well as extensive knowledge of children's literature and the review of such books, the book provides—in a single resource—the best in recently published picture book biographies that rely on primary and secondary sources, the best in storytelling styles, and the most engaging illustrations. The unit and lesson ideas within can be used as is or modified as needed. The selected biographies enable connections between the stories of individuals' lives in history and required areas of study.

Teaching to Complexity: A Framework to Evaluate Literary and Content-Area Texts

As an important tool for instruction and text selection, Teaching to Text Complexity helps teachers learn to evaluate children's and young adult literature and informational text for quality and complexity to support rigorous literacy and content learning. In addition, this timely resource explores how instructional purpose shapes not only the kinds of curricular texts used, but also considers their complexity relative to readers. By offering a framework for text selection, this book helps teachers more deeply understand text complexity in today's standards as well as its importance when building and using text sets in the classroom and reading for different purposes.

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography