Appropriateness: According to Scholastic, the reading grade level equivalent is an 8.6 and the interest level is 9-12. Written as a memoir, students would be reading about a man his/her own age growing up but just in just a different time. A collection that needed more nonfiction or biographies would need a book like this. Students who have an interest in journalism or writing could use this book. As students prepare for career research, this would be a good addition. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.” The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Nanette O’Hare has played the quintessential privileged star athlete and straight-A student for as long as she can remember. But when a beloved teacher gives her his worn copy of The Bubblegum Reaper—a mysterious, out-of-print cult classic—the rebel within Nanette awakens.” Juliet Takes A Breath by Gabby Rivera Episodes I read with particular relish included the author's flight-training during WWII and the story of his relationship with the "dangerous and unsuitable" Mimi.

There’s a fair bit of self-reflection in Book Two. Glasser was clearly an introspective person by nature. This tendency becomes more marked in Book Three, in which he chronicles his working life in post-war London. On the whole I found this the least successful of the 3 books, though it has its moments.

Non-Fiction Coming Of Age Books

I think, in the West—I’ve been living in America for three and a half years—I think boyhood is changing here of course. Boys tend to develop an almost violent perception of the self while growing up, but the Millennials’ outlook on life is different. The society of today is much more aware of violence and the repercussions of these things, and is much more vocal about it. There is, like never before, awareness about feminism and women’s rights, for example, and what it means to be respectful of one another. Some of those concerns were not there a hundred years ago, and they aren’t even there today in most parts of Africa. So I think in that sense, in the moral sense, there’s a difference in boyhood today in the West. Authority: Russell Baker is an award winning journalist and published author. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, one of which is for this book. In this novel, he wrote first-hand about day-to-day events he experienced. Baker’s wit as a humorist has been compared with that of Mark Twain. “ The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer,” wrote Baker, “ and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.” In 1979, Baker received his first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in his “ Observer” column for the New York Times (1962 to 1998). His 1983 autobiography, Growing Up earned him a second Pulitzer. In 1993, Baker began hosting the PBS television series Masterpiece Theatre. Ways of Seeing by John Berger, at 18. It introduced me to the idea that what we assume to be natural is often ideological. In the book, this is primarily about art(particularly how images of women in art are utterly encoded with the male gaze) but I took from it an understanding that nearly everything we create, indeed think, has an underlying unconscious ideological component. In Africa, it is a cultural thing to regard anything that comes to disrupt the unity of an entity as a madman.”

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own—populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.” The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

All About Me topic books for EYFS – our recommended titles

The book is also intensely melancholy, in a way that I think might have put me off at other moments in my own journey but thankfully didn't as I read.