MEMOIR is writing that matters—for a variety of reasons. Because memoir is, in essence, narrative nonfiction, it contains elements of both narrative and informational writing/literature and provides an effective way to bridge the gap between these two types of writing and, as narrative nonfiction, memoir bridges the gap between fiction and informative texts and compels the application of diverse reading strategies, meeting multiple state standards.
What does memoir writing have to do with reading and MG/YA literature? As I discuss in Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core, reading memoirs provides mentor texts for writing memoirs. As readers read about people, places, objects, and events which are meaningful to published memoirists, they can notice and note how the memoirists write about these topics, using memoirs are mentors for their writings.
As literature, memoirs appeal to all readers because they are available at all reading levels and lengths; on all topics from dancing to sports to survival and resilience; in many formats, including prose, free verse, graphic, multi-formatted, and even as rhyming poems. Memoirs are written in first and third person, and can be humorous, poignant, and enlightening. Readers can together read whole-class memoirs, as described in Talking Texts: A Teachers' Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum, participate in Memoir Book Clubs or memoir essay clubs, and read self-selected memoirs individually. In addition to memoirs, there are novels, such as Front Desk, that closely follow the author’s life, and there are biographies written in the style of memoir in that they focus on a particular part of a person’s life or particular events based around a theme and emphasize personal experience, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and reflections rather than facts, at times written in first person..
Below are memoirs which I have read and memoirs read by my own middle grade students and in elementary and secondary classrooms where I have facilitated memoir units which include memoir reading. My more-recently read memoirs are also reviewed below. Memoirs are divided into Individual Memoirs (first row are the memoirs reviewed), memoir collections, picture book memoirs which were read in elementary units I facilitated and employed as mentor texts for Reading Workshop focus reading lessons and for Writing Workshop memoir writing lessons, and some memoir-type biographies I have read and reviewed.
Shout; Big Apple Diaries; Enchanted Air; Soaring Earth; Ordinary Hazards; My Family Divided; Sylvie; When Stars Are Scattered; Everything Sad Is Untrue; How I Discovered Poetry; Free Lunch; Honor Girl; Stop Pretending; Front Desk;
Brown Girl Dreaming; Taking Flight; ; Hey, Kiddo; Chinese Cinderella; Guts; Smile; Sisters; I Am Malala; Positive; Soul Surfer; Kaffir Boy; The Glass Caastle; My Thirteenth Winter; Waiting to Waltz; Bad Boy; A Long Way Gone; Guts; My Life in Dog Years; We Beat the Streets; The Pact; ; When I Was Puerto Rican; They Called Us Enemy; Night; March Book One; March Book Two; March Book Three; The Burn Journals; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings;
Living Beyond Borders; Boundless; Parkland Speaks; When I Was Your Age—Volumes I & II; You Too?; Hope Nation; With Their Eyes; Open Mic; Going Where I’m Coming From; Been There, Done That—Writing Stories from Real Life; Been There, Done That—School Dazed;
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge; Sweet Sweet Memory; Halloween; Coat of Many Colors; The Keeping Quilt; My Ol’ Man; Meteor!; When I Was Young in the Mountains; The Relatives Came; Grandparent Poems;
The Last Cheery Blossom; Force of Nature; She Persisted—Temple Grandin; X; Audacity; The Lightning Dreamer; Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight; Feed Your Mind; Above the Rim