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Reviewing biography.

Article Excerpt
When I was about eight or nine, I, like so many children that age, had one favored book I read over and over. In retrospect, that book, Sarah Faith Anderson: Her Book, stuns me with its simplicity, sentimentality, and offhanded racism. But when I was young, Sarah Faith Anderson became not only a treasured reading experience but also a trusted friend.

This literary love affair ended on my tenth birthday. An aunt of mine, in the most wrongheaded piece of readers advisory I ever encountered, decided that because the Seminole Indians played a supporting role in my beloved book (a simplistic portrayal that only served as a plot contrivance, but who knew at eight years old?), she would give me a biography of Osceola, who, in the early part of the nineteenth century, led the Seminole people to resist their forced resettlement in present-day Oklahoma. Unlike the inviting Sarah Faith Anderson, this book, War Chief of the Seminoles, had no illustrations and contained over one hundred pages of tiny, seven-point type. It was probably aimed at readers much older than I; nonetheless, my mother made me read it before I wrote the obligatory thank-you note.

Although the book did prove useful (it served as the basis for my annual biography report for the next five years), I hated reading every word. Still, even after repeated encounters with Osceola, my memories of War Chief of the Seminoles are not necessarily accurate and have probably allowed this remembered book, in the words of poet John Tobias, to "become more real / Than the one that was." In later years, however, those recollections--real or imagined--nag at me when I read children's biographies, causing me to dismiss those with the hated features of War Chief of the Seminoles: a larger-than-life, near-perfect individual to be honored and emulated; a lack of historical context within which to place the subject; an endless tally of accomplishments that show little relationship to either character or reader; and an organizing structure that revolves around birth and death dates rather than an implied theme concerning the subject's life.

While these criteria may have started as personal preferences, they extend beyond such and reflect the degree to which authors pay attention to the twin components of biography: fiction and nonfiction. Biography's ties to fiction lie in its story narrative; its allegiance to nonfiction, in its history. As a reviewer, I must be conscious of both parts of the genre, not letting strong story overpower sloppy history or impressive history compensate for weak story.

Make no mistake here. With few exceptions, biography is a product of history. Without history, biography becomes an expanded newspaper article from contemporary culture at best and celebrity product placement at worst. Reading about a life yet unfinished is somewhat like taking a trip from New York to San Francisco and not getting any further than Philadelphia. Think, for example, how different a 1985 biography of Jimmy Carter would have been from one written in 2003. And, although many children choose to read accounts of contemporary celebrities, to delude them into believing that most of these journalistic works are biographies underrates both the genre and readers' abilities to reach beyond what they already know.

History presents one...

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