Biography & Autobiography

Fast-paced and easy-to-read, these softcover 32-page graphic biographies teach students about historical figures: those who lead us into new territory, pursued scientific discoveries; battled injustice and prejudice; and broke down creative and artistic barriers. These biographies offer a variety of rich primary and secondary source material to support teaching to standards. Using the graphics, students can activate prior knowledge—bridge what they already know with what they have yet to learn. Graphically illustrated biographies also teach inference skills, character development, dialogue, transitions, and drawing conclusions. Graphic biographies in the classroom provide an intervention with proven success for the struggling reader. more...

Price: $7.95

“All my life I had one dream and that was to be in the movies.” He was the Golden Boy of the Golden Age. A prince of the silver screen. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. more...

Price: $25.95

The luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy - exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling - does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. more...

Price: $11.99

Born in Germany in 1929, Anne Frank was a teenager during World War II. Because Anne was from a Jewish family, she and her family were forced to escape the terror of the Holocaust that swept the continent. Beginning in 1942, Anne kept a diary of the difficult journey of her family. See how Anne’s family tried to escape the horror of war, and how her diary became her best friend. Guided by Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people, this series of softcover 64-page biographies focuses on the leaders, scientists, and icons who shaped our world. These people, many from very humble beginnings, changed how the world works. Each biography includes a glossary, timeline and illustrations. An individual guide for each title provides reproducible activities to extend the text. more...

Price: $7.95

Athénaïs de Montespan reigned as official mistress to Louis XIV during the most glorious period of "the splendid century." As lovely and charming as she was witty and cunning, Athénaïs quickly rose to far greater prominence than the King's own spouse. It was Madame de Montespan who was known as "the real Queen of France," the symbol of the apotheosis of French culture in the seventeenth century. As a lover, she risked the disgrace of double adultery to conduct an affair that scandalized Europe; as a patron, she supported many of the leaders of the cultural renaissance; as a mother, she is the ancestor of most of the royal houses of Europe. In her superb new biography, Lisa Hilton chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman. She vividly describes Athénaïs's unhappy marriage to a gamester nobleman, her entry into the decadent and intricate world of court politics, and her brilliant seduction of France's most desired suitor, the King himself. Athénaïs transformed Louis from a shy, awkward young monarch into the polished Sun King of legend. Louis's court, too, was guided by his lover's hand: Athénaïs was famous for the brilliance of her fêtes, the extravagance of her gambling, and the impeccability of her taste in everything from fashion to buildings. She inspired plays by Molière and Racine, organized ballets and operas by Lully and Quinault, and commissioned châteaux by the leading architects in France. Throughout the "âge Montespan," Athénaïs used her wit and beauty to stave off the intrigues of courtiers, the machinations of Versailles's clerics, and the wiles of lovely young pretenders to the King's heart?all doggedly seeking to unseat her. It was not until the Affair of the Poisons, a bizarre witch hunt which uncovered conspiracy in the highest echelons of the nobility, that Athénaïs's hold on the King and cour more...

Price: $11.99