Teen Memoirs

From the time she was a girl, Jane Goodall dreamed of a life spent working with animals. Finally she had her wish. When she was 26 years old, she ventured into the forests of Africa to observe chimpanzees in the wild. On her expeditions she braved the dangers with leopards and lions in the African bush. And she got to know an amazing group of wild chimpanzees - intelligent animals whose lives, in work and play and family relationships, bear a surprising resemblance to our own.

Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes - she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance.

Searching for answers everywhere has led you to believe your beloved child might have schizophrenia. You can only find horror stories on the illness, that is when you’re able to understand the lengthy and confusing medical terminology at all.

In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although best sellers such as Poor Richard's Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true.

A highly unsettling blend of true crime and coming-of-age memoir - The Stranger Beside Me meets Prep - that presents an intimate and thought-provoking portrait of girlhood within Manhattan’s exclusive prep-school scene in the early 1990s, and a thoughtful meditation on adolescent obsession and the vulnerability of youth.

The candid, poignant, unforgettable writing of the young girl whose own life story has become an everlasting source of courage and inspiration. Hiding from the Nazis in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building in Amsterdam, a 13-year-old girl named Anne Frank became a writer. The now famous diary of her private life and thoughts reveals only part of Anne’s story, however. This audiobook rounds out the portrait of this remarkable and talented young author.

Bailey welcomes a fresh start at the prestigious boarding school, Prescott Academy, far away from the painful memories of her mother's death and the unendurable happiness of her father and his new wife. She expects rigorous coursework and long hours of studying - what she doesn't expect is to be inducted into the Science Club, a group of wealthy and intelligent students who run a business cooking up drugs in their spare time. Suddenly, Bailey has everything she's ever wanted, including a sweet and handsome boyfriend named Warren, the brainy lead chemist in the Club.

This profoundly moving memoir is the remarkable and inspiring true story of Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, and overcame her trauma through art and activism. Sandra was just 10 years old when she found herself with a gun pointed at her head. She had watched as rebels gunned down her mother and six-year-old sister in a refugee camp.

With her Twilight series of novels, author Stephenie Meyer created a media sensation that earned her millions of fans. After the incredible success of the film adaptation of Twilight in 2008, interest in this series (and its author) can only increase. This title explores the life of Meyer and her fiction, which continues to capture the imaginations of so many young readers.

Sixteen-year-old Elly Gotz hides with his family in an underground bunker in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania, prepared to die rather than be found by the Nazis. After surviving nearly three years in the ghetto, where thousands from the Jewish community have been murdered, Elly and his family refuse to be the Nazis’ next victims. But there is no escape from the liquidation of the ghetto in the summer of 1944, and Elly and his family are taken to Kaufering, a brutal subcamp of the notorious Dachau concentration camp.

In 1996, Scott was nineteen and lost in adulthood with an endless job and no future ambitions. Teenage Degenerate is his story about drug addiction, music and growing up. Over the course of ten months, he quickly descends into the dark and dangerous world of crystal methamphetamine. Scott experiments with crystal meth in a dark, deserted parking lot in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado and soon after his crew of misfits will do almost anything for their next high.

Over 1600 years ago, God raised up a man named Patrick to take the Gospel of Christ to the people of Ireland. Seldom in church history has any missionary been blessed with a more fruitful ministry. The preaching of Patrick was used by God to transform many of the Irish people from idol-worshiping pagans into servants of the one true God of Scripture.

John Lynch was a promising athlete, but at age 11 was struck by a crippling illness. He was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis (JA), a disease that affects 300,000 children, making them unable to live full-functioning, pain-free lives. John continued to seek new treatments, but not until age 53 was he given the “miracle drug” that enabled him to sustain a 30-year legal practice. During that time, he dedicated his life to helping others who suffered from JA and became a much-honored advocate for easing their distress.

The author of this diary began journaling on her 16th birthday. She lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in Santa Monica with her mom, dad, and Berkeley-bound older brother. She was a good girl, living a good life...but one party changed everything. One party, where she took one taste - and liked it. Really liked it.

Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship that becomes a lifeline during dark times.

Over the course of a year, the members of the now infamous Bling Ring allegedly burglarized some of the biggest names in young Hollywood. Driven by celebrity worship, vanity, and the desire to look and dress like the rich and famous, these seven teenagers made headlines for using Google maps, Facebook, and TMZ to track the comings and goings of their targets. Many of the houses were unlocked. Alarms disabled. A "perfect" crime - celebrities already had so much, why shouldn't the Bling Ring take their share?

Growing up, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg didn’t always fit in. He felt different from his father and brothers, who loved to hunt and go camping, and out of place in the rural, conservative small town where he lived. Back then, blending in was more important than feeling seen. So, when Chasten realized he was gay, he kept that part of himself hidden away for a long, painful time. With incredible bravery, and the support of his loved ones, Chasten eventually came out—and when he did, he learned that being true to himself was the most rewarding journey of all.

Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, music, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language.

With his signature acerbic wit and hilarious voice, 20-something author, blogger, and entrepreneur Shane Burcaw is back with an essay collection about living a full life in a body that many people perceive as a tragedy. From anecdotes about first introductions where people patted him on the head instead of shaking his hand, to stories of passersby mistaking his able-bodied girlfriend for a nurse, Shane tackles awkward situations and assumptions with humor and grace.

Irene Gut was just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.