Telling the Untold Stories for Children: Biographies for Kids and Why They Matter

This is a hybrid event. The in-person reception will begin at 4:30 PM. Please visit here to register.

Biography can be a powerful vehicle for telling some of the untold and under-told stories of people’s lives. This may be especially true for children, who are forming their ideas about what matters, and who matters, in part through the books they read.

The New England Biography Series is proud to convene a conversation with three well-known children’s writers who focus on biographies of underrepresented groups. Ray Anthony Shepard, whose award-winning books for teens include biographies of well-known and relatively unknown Black Americans; Heather Lang, whose biographies for young readers focus on amazing but mostly unfamiliar women; and Mia Wenjen, author of both two picture biographies for children and two biographical anthologies for middle schoolers that center the stories of Asian Pacific Americans, will discuss their work, what biographies for children can do, and why it’s important to be writing for children in these times when some communities struggle over control of school curricula, public library holdings, and controversies about whether there are books that should be banned.