Biographies

Biographies are vital in the retelling of someone’s life. Biographies are needed for young readers because they need to read about people like them or different from them. Biographies can give the readers a feeling of being able to accomplish something big if they are like them. Like the book The Comic Book Story of Baseball written by Alex Irvine, this text gives different perspectives about playing baseball – some doing well and some struggling. With this book, some of the readers will get engaged with the text quickly because of their interests in baseball. Irvine is great with how he articulates the progression and evolution of baseball and how it is presented to the readers. As Temple, Martinez, and Yokata (2019) describe, “through biographies, children come to understand the people who have shaped history, created inventions, discovered scientific principles, composed music, crafted works of art, and contributed to their local communities. Children realize that they, too, can make a difference in the world.” If people were able to make a difference in major league baseball, students can make a change in the world – they just need to believe that they can. Through biographies, real stories are told to its readers and can tell a story of overcoming a struggle and the challenge that comes along with becoming successful.

Biographies of people who look like my students are critical. The students want to relate to someone like them. They want to feel like they are, too, able to make it out of the “hood”. Biographies provide that outlet because it is possible to become successful and accomplished. When a biography informs, engages, and encourages critical thinking in the reader, it has accomplished what a biography needs to be (Temple, Martinez, and Yokota, 2019).

I can incorporate biographies into my classroom about People of Color who have gone into the STEM field. There is this mindset that people believe they “can’t do math” – this is not true, anyone can do the math. When students see others who have been successful in mathematics who look just like they do, they will be inspired to pursue something with mathematics. For example, the movie “Hidden Figures” is about an African-American woman in the 1960s who worked for NASA doing mathematics, and she was really good at it. This story is what students need!