Teen-friendly Biographies & Memoirs

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When Germany invaded Poland, bombers devastated Warsaw--and the citys zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski smuggled Jews through the empty cages, saving hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

Written in side-splitting and often cringe-inducing detail, Paul Feig takes you in a time machine to a world of bombardment by dodge balls, ill-fated prom dates, hellish school bus rides, and other aspects of public school life that will keep you laughing in recognition and occasionally sighing in relief that you aren't him. Kick Me is a nostalgic trip for the inner geek in all of us.

Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and, ultimately, any sense of what it meant to be "normal". In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire n

Partridge chronicles the emotional highs and paralyzing lows John Lennon transformed into brilliant, evocative songs. With photos spanning his entire life, this is the unforgettable biography of one of rock's biggest legends.

In the tradition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Manchild in the Promised Land--an explosive memoir of hopelessness and resurrection that vividly portrays the brutality of barrio gang life. A timely exploration into the roots of Latino rage.

BRENT RUNYON WAS 14 years old when he set himself on fire.
This is a true story.
In "The Burn Journals, Runyon describes that devastating suicide attempt and his recovery over the following year. He takes us into the Burn Unit in a children's hospital and through painful burn care and skin-grafting procedures. Then to a rehabilitation hospital, for intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. And then finally back home, to the frightening prospect of entering high school.
But more importantly, Runyon takes us into his own mind. He shares his thoughts and hopes and fears with such unflinching honesty that we understand--with a terrible clarity--what it means to want to kill yourself and how it feels to struggle back toward normality.
Intense, exposed, insightful, "The Burn Journals is a deeply personal story

When Samantha Schutz first left home for college, she was excited and reveled in her independence. But as pressures increased, she began to suffer anxiety attacks that would leave her mentally shaken and physically incapacitated. Thus began a hard road of discovery and coping, powerfully rendered in this poetry memoir.

A "Go Ask Alice" for the Internet Age, this memoir explores what it means to be a girl in the digital world. Tarbox, now 18, tells an eye-opening tale about her descent into the seductive world of the Internet where she met a sexual predator online when she was just 13.

Imagine that you're going through one of the hardest parts of your life-- being a teenager-- when your parents are killed in a horrific car
crash. Now you, your 17-year-old sister, and your three-year-old brother are on your own.
Imagine what that would be like. Then read this book and find out.

"From the Hardcover edition."