Collection: Biography & Memoir

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honor - American Library Association (ALA)
NAACP Image Awards Nominee - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Galardonada con el premio Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award, una biografía de la virtuosa del jazz afroamericana Melba Doretta Liston, una trombonista, compositora y arreglista musical pionera del siglo XX en una época en la que pocas mujeres tocaban instrumentos y formaban parte de la escena del jazz.

Recipient of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor award, a biography of African American jazz virtuoso Melba Doretta Liston, a pioneering twentieth-century trombone player, composer, and music arranger at a time when few women played brass instruments and were part of the jazz scene.

A los siete años, Melba Doretta Liston se enamoró de un trombón grande y brillante, y pronto aprendió a tocar el instrumento. Cuando era una adolescente, el extraordinario don de Melba para la música la llevó al mundo del jazz. Se unió a una banda dirigida por el trompetista Gerald Wilson y recorrió el país. Superando obstáculos de raza y género, Melba se convirtió en una famosa trombonista y arreglista, transformando ritmos, armonías y melodías en magníficas canciones para todos los grandes del jazz del siglo XX: Randy Weston, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday y Quincy Jones, por nombrar solo algunos.

Rebosante de entusiasmo y la alegría de hacer música, La pequeña Melba y su gran trombón es un maravilloso tributo a un músico pionero y un gran héroe anónimo del jazz.

At age seven, Melba Doretta Liston fell in love with a big, shiny trombone, and soon taught herself to play the instrument. By the time she was a teenager, Melba's extraordinary gift for music led her to the world of jazz. She joined a band led by trumpet player Gerald Wilson and toured the country. Overcoming obstacles of race and gender, Melba went on to become a famed trombone player and arranger, spinning rhythms, harmonies, and melodies into gorgeous songs for all the jazz greats of the twentieth century: Randy Weston, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Quincy Jones, to name just a few.

Brimming with ebullience and the joy of making music, Little Melba and Her Big Trombone is a fitting tribute to a trailblazing musician and a great unsung hero of jazz.

Discover the life of Walt Disney--a story about imagination and invention for kids ages 6 to 9

Walt Disney was a talented artist who created magical new worlds in the form of TV shows, movies, and amusement parks. Before he won the hearts of millions with characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Walt was an imaginative boy who loved drawing. He learned how to use the newest technology to make cartoons that would entertain and delight viewers all over the world. This essential Disney story explores how Walt went from being a young boy growing up in the Midwest to being a creative genius.

Independent reading--This Walt Disney biography book is broken down into short chapters and simple language so kids 6 to 9 can read and learn on their own.

Who was Walt Disney? --With this Walt Disney chapter book, kids will learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Walt's life, find definitions of new words, discussion questions, and more.

A lasting legacy--Kids will discover some of the history of Walt Disney World and Disneyland, and how Walt changed the world of animation and entertainment for future generations.

How will Walt's hard work and love of storytelling inspire you?

"With its personal feel and near-mystical quality, this highly recommended work will mesmerize baseball lovers and casual fans." Library Journal, Starred Review

A behind-the-scenes look at baseball history, as told through timeless interviews with major leaguers

For fifty years, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has been interviewing some of the most fascinating figures in baseball. Their conversations are a journey back in time to the days of Ruth and Gehrig, Gehringer and Greenberg, Robinson and Reese, and Howard and Mantle, as they reflect on the sport's greatest moments and biggest issues.

In Baseball Heaven, Golenbock brings together for the first time the most historic and captivating of these conversations. The stories range from Elden Auker remembering the day Lou Gehrig told him he was sick to Albert Happy Chandler reflecting on his decision to allow Jackie Robinson into the big leagues, from Ralph Branca discussing the home run he gave up that cost the Dodgers the pennant to Del Webb talking about why he hired Casey Stengel and why he fired him.

Baseball Heaven is baseball history at its very best. It pulls back the curtain on the major leagues to reveal inside stories, intimate reminiscences, and the friendships and rivalries that make baseball America's Game.

The Lou Conter Story: From USS Arizona Survivor to Unsung American Hero tells the incredible story of one of the last remaining survivors of the USS Arizona. More than just a recollection of the events that transpired in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, this book also records the author's memorable experiences before and after the Day of Infamy.

Conter was on the USS Arizona deck when a Japanese armor-piercing bomb hit one million pounds of gunpowder stored in the ship's hull. He helped rescue crewmen following the explosion and dove into the wreckage to recover bodies in the days after. In 1942, Conter went to flight school where he earned his wings and became a VP-11 Black Cat pilot. He helped rescue over two hundred Australian Coastwatchers stranded in northern New Guinea and was shot down twice -- once swimming with his crew while sharks circled. Conter also helped rescue over two hundred Australian shore watchers up the Sepik River in New Guinea.

After World War II, he became an intelligence officer, flew combat in Korea, created the Navy's first SERE program (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape), and served as a military advisor to presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.

Lou Conter shares his Pearl Harbor experiences with high school students throughout Northern California, and he returns to the USS Arizona every December to take part in National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day activities to honor and remember the 2,403 service members and civilians who were killed during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. In 2019, Conter was one of only three remaining crew members out of the 335 who had survived the attack on the USS Arizona. He was the only survivor able to attend the memorial event.

After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney's death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression.

During a hospital stay, years into their relationship, Matthiessen confessed to Cheney that "never once has the freshness of your life lost any trace of its magic for me. Every day is a new discovery of your wealth." Situating the couple's private correspondence alongside other sources, Scott Bane tells the remarkable story of their relationship in the context of shifting social dynamics in the United States. From the vantage point of the present day, with marriage equality enacted into law, Bane provides a window into the realities faced by same-sex couples in the early twentieth century, as they maintained relationships in the face of overt discrimination and the absence of legal protections.

In Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety, Yvonne Castañeda shares vibrant stories of her childhood growing up in Miami as the daughter of humble immigrants from Mexico and Cuba . . . and how she came to develop an unhealthy relationship with food.

To help ease her mami's nervios, Yvonne becomes a perfectionist from a young age, achieving high grades at school and mastering the piano. But as her Cuban family members openly make comments about her awkward desarrollo, or puberty, Yvonne enters a new phase of self-consciousness that begins her obsession with weight.

She abandons the piano for the high school cheerleading team, and reinvents herself, becoming both skinny and popular. However, as a first-generation adolescent born in the United States, Yvonne wrestles with the conflict between the cultural norms of her Hispanic/Latino heritage and American societal expectations.

Plagued by doubt and low self-esteem, Yvonne begins a vicious cycle of weight gain and loss, as she battles Bulimia Nervosa. Beleaguered by feelings of guilt, shame, and inferiority, she develops anxiety, depression, and a reliance on dangerous coping mechanisms.

Ultimately, sage advice from her dear abuela in Guadalajara, Mexico, guides Yvonne to a realization that shifts her perspective of herself and the purpose of her life, providing a foundation for inner peace, and la solución to her past struggles.

Melissa Moore shares the true story of her life as the daughter of the notorious 'Happy Face' serial killer. As she realises the full extent of the gruesome crimes, Melissa also begins to realise that she can't change her father - all she has control over is her own life and deciding how she will move on.

Dionne Warwick made her singing debut in church at the request of her grandfather, the Reverend Elzae Warrick, when she was six years old. No one knew then that she would become an international music legend, but what she knew--as words of wisdom passed d

This is the thrilling story of Robert Smalls and the Confederate ship that he used to liberate himself, his family, and over a dozen others from enslavement.

On the night of May 13th, 1862, as the Civil War raged on in the United States, 16 enslaved people decided they would reach freedom or die trying. Filled to the brim with suspense, this true story details how Robert Smalls commandeered a confederate ship through the Charleston harbor toward liberation at the Union blockade.

Experience both determination and triumph with this picture book written by Robert Small's great great grandson, Michael Boulware Moore, with illustrations by the award winning artist Bryan Collier.

An eloquent and intimate debut memoir about navigating the gap between expectation and reality in modern motherhood.

I Cannot Control Everything Forever is Emily Bloom's journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into the history of science, as she traces the discoveries that impacted the modern state of pregnancy and motherhood. With the birth of their daughter, who is diagnosed with congenital deafness and later, Type 1 diabetes, Emily and her husband find their life centered around medical data, devices, and doctor's visits, but also made richer and fuller by parenting an exceptional child.

As Emily learns, technology and data do not reduce the labor of caretaking. These things often fall, as the pandemic starkly revealed, on mothers. Trying to find a way out of the loneliness and individualism of 21st century parenthood, Emily finds joy in reaching outwards, towards art and literature-such as the maternal messiness of Louise Bourgeois or Greek myths about the power of fate-as well as the collective sustenance of friends and community.

With lyrical and enchanting prose, I Cannot Control Everything Forever is an inspired meditation on art, science, and motherhood.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Maya Angelou's classic memoirs have had an enduring impact on American literature and culture. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters.

This Modern Library edition contains I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to widespread acclaim in 1969, Maya Angelou garnered the attention of an international audience with the triumphs and tragedies of her childhood in the American South. This soul-baring memoir launched a six-book epic spanning the sweep of the author's incredible life. Now, for the first time, all six celebrated and bestselling autobiographies are available in this handsome one-volume edition.

Dedicated fans and newcomers alike can follow the continually absorbing chronicle of Angelou's life: her formative childhood in Stamps, Arkansas; the birth of her son, Guy, at the end of World War II; her adventures traveling abroad with the famed cast of Porgy and Bess; her experience living in a black expatriate "colony" in Ghana; her intense involvement with the civil rights movement, including her association with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; and, finally, the beginning of her writing career.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou traces the best and worst of the American experience in an achingly personal way. Angelou has chronicled her remarkable journey and inspired people of every generation and nationality to embrace life with commitment and passion.

Pass It On! by Gloria J. McEwen Burgess and illustrated by Gerald Purnell is a children's picture book about the author's father, Earnest McEwen Jr., and his life-changing relationship with Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Faulkner.

As a young boy, Ernie (Earnest McEwen Jr.) dreamed of a better life for his family in the segregated South of the 1930s. More than anything, he wanted to go to college.

While working as a janitor at Ol' Miss (the University of Mississippi), Ernie spoke to a professor about his burning desire to go to college, setting in motion a series of events that would change his and his family's life for all time. One of those significant events was meeting Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Faulkner.

​Faulkner helped Ernie attend college, paying for his tuition and expenses with no strings attached. His generous financial gift allowed Ernie to go to college, move out of the South, and eventually emerge from poverty. Ernie made a better life for his family, who continue to live a legacy of life-long learning and service, passing on their blessings to the next generation and the next, creating a ripple effect that will bless generations to come.

Kirkus Review
Pass It On!
by Gloria J. McEwen Burgess and illustrated by Gerald Purnell

An author and inspirational speaker offers a picture-book biography of her father that explores segregation and access to education.

Set during the 1930s in a segregated Mississippi, Burgess' (Flawless Leadership, 2016, etc.) work chronicles how, as a boy, Earnest McEwen Jr. loved to read anything he could get his hands on. His black parents both worked in the cotton fields, and Ernie dreamed of a better life for his family. He wanted to go to college. Ernie finished high school, where he met his future wife, Millie. After getting a job as a janitor at the University of Mississippi, he met two professors who introduced him to William Faulkner. The author changed Ernie's life by paying his tuition to Alcorn, a university for black students. "Pass it on"--the only repayment Faulkner requested--became Ernie's motto, which he gave to his daughters, as explained in the author's note at the end. The superb story is full of hope, showing people reaching across boundaries to help one another and provide a better life for the next generation. The details in Purnell's (A Homerun for Bunny, 2013, etc.) beautifully realistic paintings and his attention to the faces of his subjects draw in readers. In this book, initially funded via Kickstarter, Burgess' vocabulary is accessible. While she never talks down to readers, she presents the material in an approachable fashion.This excellent and uplifting account of a grim American era promotes hope and kindness.

Celebrate the greatest baseball players of all time, their major historical moments, and their love for the game with this illustrated collection of true baseball stories for kids.

Officially licensed with The Hall of Fame, Out of the Park! follows the incredible careers and lives of your favorite ballplayers, from Babe Ruth to Derek Jeter. Each player's story is accompanied by background biographical information and either a beautiful illustration or original photograph from The Hall of Fame. Organized in chronological order, each section introduces a player and focuses on an important moment in their career.

Some of the significant players and their historical moments include:

• Babe Ruth establishes a single-season home run record that will last for 34 years in 1927.
• Ted Williams finishes the 1941 season with an average above .400, a magical mark attained by only a few.
• Joe DiMaggio establishes what many argue is baseball's most "unbreakable" record--a 56-game winning streak--in 1941.
• Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby break the MLB color barrier in the landmark 1947 season.
• Derek Jeter, "Captain Clutch," plays his last game, 2014, ending in a walk-off single to win the game.

Kids in the middle grades can reference the side bars in each section to find fun and engaging stats, facts, quotes, and more. Featuring over 150 players, this all-encompassing collection is your go-to reference for learning about great athletes.

Authored by prolific sportswriter James Buckley Jr., Out of the Park! is the perfect addition to any sports library.

Sylvia Earle first lost her heart to the ocean as a young girl when she discovered the wonders of the Gulf of Mexico in her backyard. As an adult, she dives even deeper. Whether she's designing submersibles, swimming with the whales, or taking deep-water walks, Sylvia Earle has dedicated her life to learning more about what she calls the blue heart of the planet. With stunningly detailed pictures of the wonders of the sea, Life in the Ocean tells the story of Sylvia's growing passion and how her ocean exploration and advocacy have made her known around the world. This picture book biography also includes an informative author's note that will motivate young environmentalists.

Life in the Ocean is one of The Washington Post's Best Kids Books of 2012

"The Professor and the Madman," masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" -- and literary history. The compilation of the "OED," begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history--Harriet Tubman--a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonates today.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before.

Not only did Tubman help liberate hundreds of slaves, she was the first woman to lead an armed expedition during the Civil War, worked as a spy for the Union Army, was a fierce suffragist, and was an advocate for the aged. She Came to Slay reveals the many complexities and varied accomplishments of one of our nation's true heroes and offers an accessible and modern interpretation of Tubman's life that is both informative and engaging.

Filled with rare outtakes of commentary, an expansive timeline of Tubman's life, photos (both new and those in public domain), commissioned illustrations, and sections including "Harriet By the Numbers" (number of times she went back down south, approximately how many people she rescued, the bounty on her head) and "Harriet's Homies" (those who supported her over the years), She Came to Slay is a stunning and powerful mix of pop culture and scholarship and proves that Harriet Tubman is well deserving of her permanent place in our nation's history.