My Thoughts About Biographies and Informational Texts

I really enjoy informational texts. I think even the children's versions of these works are very informative and they even give great information to adults as well as children. I think it is remarkable how much information can be put into a work made for children! I think that children also enjoy these works because the love to learn about new things and how things work, animals they are not familiar with, etc.

In my personal reading time outside of school I generally prefer to read fictional tales because they just seems more leisurely to me. However, in the past few years I have come to really love biographies and autobiographies of famous people in our country. In a class recently, I was assigned several non-fiction biographies about people such as Sitting Bull, Theodore Roosevelt, Aimme Semple McPherson, and Ronald Reagan and I must say that I have enjoyed these books, with the exception of the one about Sitting Bull, greatly!

I believe that biographies in general can be very helpful for research. I think that the information they provide can be much more helpful than simply reading about a person in an encyclopedia or other reference book because those who write biographies tend to spend much time compiling research about that particular person before writing their book. Oftentimes these authors even conduct interviews with these people and/or their close friends and family members in order to have a more personal connection to the person about which they write.

One of my favorite types of biographies are autobiographies because they provide even more "inside information" since the author is also the person being written about and no one knows the topic better than that person! Two autobiographies that I have read recently and really enjoyed were Robin McGraw: Inside My Heart and It's All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life, the former deals with the wife of Dr. Phil McGraw and details her life and the latter of which deals with the wife of a famous country music singer and her journey to find Jesus and keep Him a part of her life.

Biographies for younger readers are also great because they are much more succinct in their information, but give very interesting information geared toward their particular audience. They also give readers insight into the lives of many different types of people, which ensures that children receive a well-rounded education!