American Biography For Teens

At first glance Gabriel Cardona is the poster-boy American teenager: great athlete, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the streets of his border town of Laredo, Texas, are poor and dangerous, and it isn't long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of the Zetas, a drug cartel with roots in the Mexican military. His younger friend, Bart, as well as others from Gabriel's childhood join him in working for the Zetas, boosting cars and smuggling drugs, eventually catching the eye of the cartel's leadership.

When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six—a secret unit made up of the finest soldiers in the country, if not the world. I Am a SEAL Team Six Warrior is the dramatic tale of how Howard Wasdin overcame a tough childhood to live his dream and enter the exciting and dangerous world of US Navy SEALs and Special Forces snipers. This is Howard Wasdin's story of overcoming abuse and beating the odds to become an elite American warrior.

Michaela DePrince was known as girl no. 27 at the orphanage where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes.

From the perspective of the young adult he was then, Francisco Jiménez describes the challenges he faced in his efforts to continue his education. During his college years, the very family solidarity that allowed Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family behind when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico.

With her election to the vice presidency, her election to the US Senate, and her position as attorney general of California, Kamala Harris has blazed trails throughout her entire political career. But how did she achieve her goals? What values and influences guided and inspired her along the way? In this young readers edition of Kamala Harris’ memoir, we learn about the impact that her family and community had on her life and see what led her to discover her own sense of self and purpose.

Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived. He played professional football, major league baseball, and won Olympic gold medals in track and field. But his life wasn't an easy one. Born on the Sac and Fox Reservation in 1887, he encountered much family tragedy, and was sent as a young boy to various Indian boarding schools: strict, cold institutions that didn't allow their students to hold on to their Native American languages and traditions.

From noted ESPN commentator and journalist Kate Fagan, the heartbreaking and vital story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose death by suicide rocked the University of Pennsylvania campus and whose life reveals with haunting detail and uncommon understanding the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today.

As he prepares to recite the Declaration of Independence before his eighth grade social studies class in California, the thing Francisco has feared for 10 years finally happens. La migra, the immigration police, come to his classroom and pick him up for deportation to Mexico. Soon back in the United States with a "green card", Francisco struggles through adolescence, working two or three jobs a day and striving to excel at school.

At the age of 14, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for 20 hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice.

Into a memoir that is gripping, funny, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, Walter Dean Myers richly weaves the details of his Harlem childhood in the 1940s and 1950s: a loving home life with his adopted parents, Bible school, street games, and the vitality of his neighborhood. Although Walter spent much of his time either getting into trouble or on the basketball court, secretly he was a voracious reader and an aspiring writer.

Through the telling of events from his own life, Wes Moore (author of the best-selling adult title The Other Wes Moore) explores the issues that separate success and failure. He also counterpoints his story with another man, someone who shared the same name, was almost the same age, grew up fatherless in a similar Baltimore neighborhood, but is serving a life sentence for murder. Compelled to write to the other Wes, the author was surprised to receive a reply. And so began a friendship, as letters turned into visits and the two men got to know one another.

In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much—but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot.

One of America's most influential Hispanics - Maria on Sesame Street - delivers a beautifully wrought coming-of-age memoir. Set in the 1970s in the Bronx, this is the story of a girl with a dream. When listeners meet young Sonia, she is a child living amid the squalor of a boisterous home that is filled with noisy relatives and nosy neighbors. Each day she is glued to the TV screen that blots out the painful realities of her existence and also illuminates the possibilities that lie ahead.

New York Times best-selling author and Newbery Honor-recipient Steve Sheinkin gives young listeners the causes and curses that divided America into Union and Confederate nations. Unraveling a very complicated string of events - the small things, the personal ones, the big issues - Steve Sheinkin takes listeners behind the scenes that led to the Civil War. It is a time and a war that threatened America's very existence, revealed in the surprising true stories of the soldiers and statesmen who battled it out.

Apple is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly red on the outside, white on the inside. Eric Gansworth tells his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.

As a 14-year-old, he was Malcolm Little, the president of his class and a top student. At 16, he was hustling tips at a Boston nightclub. In Harlem, he was known as Detroit Red, a slick street operator. At 19, he was back in Boston, leading a gang of burglars. At 20, he was in prison. It was in prison that Malcolm Little started the journey that would lead him to adopt the name Malcolm X, and there he developed his beliefs about what being Black means in America: beliefs that shook America then and still shake America today.

Ryan Smithson joined the Army Reserve when he was 17. Two years later, he was deployed to Iraq as an Army engineer. In this extraordinary and harrowing memoir, readers march along one GI's tour of duty. It will change the way you feel about what it means to be an American.

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

In the 2012 London Olympics, US gymnast Gabrielle Douglas stole hearts and flew high as the All-Around Gold Medal winner, as well as acting as a critical member of the US gold-medal-winning women gymnastics team. In this personal autobiography, Gabrielle tells her story of faith, perseverance, and determination, demonstrating you can reach your dreams if you let yourself soar.