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Biography facts for kids

A biography is the story of a person's life . The word comes from the Greek words bios (which means life ) and graphein (which means write ). When the biography is written by the person it is about, it is called an autobiography .

A written biography is a part of literature . Biographies can also be made as movies (often called biopics ) or told as stories.

The oldest written biographies that historians have were written to record rulers' lives. Some were written in Assyria , ancient Babylonia , ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia . Biographies were an early form of history . Another early form of biography was called hagiography, meaning writing about holy people.

In ancient China , a biography was one of the basic forms of a history book. In India , biographies of Buddha and his reincarnated lives were written. In ancient Greece , people wrote biographies of people that were not rulers too. Xenophon wrote a biography of Socrates and gave this book the name Memorabilia (Memories). During the Roman Empire , Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives about ancient Greek and Roman politicians, and Suetonius wrote biographies of the Roman emperors . The Gospels were also biographies of Jesus Christ .

In West Africa , griots tell histories which often include biographies.

Many written biographies today are released by publishers as products for sale.

Related pages

• Autobiography

Images for kids

Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch 's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson

Einhard as scribe

John Foxe 's The Book of Martyrs , was one of the earliest English-language biographies.

James Boswell wrote what many consider to be the first modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson , in 1791.

Eminent Victorians set the standard for 20th century biographical writing, when it was published in 1918.

• This page was last modified on 16 October 2023, at 16:53. Suggest an edit .

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Expert Tips for Exploring Biographies With Your Kids

Ignite a love for real stories in your child with these effective and accessible strategies..

While fostering a love for any kind of reading is crucial for your child’s learning and development, exploring biographies offers an enriching experience that motivates your child to learn in a new way. Reading biographies not only allows kids to gain valuable new perspectives, but it also encourages their own self-discovery, says Karen Burke, senior vice president of education at Scholastic Education.

“In learning about the life of another, you create comparisons and differences and begin to understand yourself a bit more,” says Burke. “Kids can see ‘famous’ and ordinary people as real people — with their failures, successes, challenges, feelings, and emotions — making extraordinary accomplishments. This can influence how a child reacts to their environment and expand their thinking.”

Getting your younger reader interested in biographies, however, may not be as habitual as encouraging them to read an action-packed fiction book. Here are five tips that will make it a joy for everyone.

1. Make a Solid Introduction

When first exploring biographies with your child, it’s important to start small and steadily build your child’s interest. Marissa Jordening, a fourth-grade teacher in Colorado, recommends starting with picture books.

“Biographical picture books are often rich in word choice and sentence structure, so they may match your child's reading level — even if it looks like a simpler book,” says Jordening. 

She suggests starting with a picture book about a notable individual or even a collection with a short biography on several individuals. The Ordinary People Change the World books about Harriet Tubman and Jane Goodall or titles such as Mae Among the Stars could be a great place to start.

2. Let Your Child’s Personal Interests Guide You

Enhance your child’s personal interests by exploring biographies of people your child admires or shares a personal connection with. 

“Readers are constantly creating connections while they read, so encourage your child to pick a biography of someone they have something in common with,” Jordening says.

Jordening also notes that a personal connection can encourage deeper examination and discussion. She recommends asking your child questions such as: How is that person similar to you? How are they different? Have you ever felt the way they felt? This will help your child in their own self-discovery.

3. Don't Get Overzealous With Advanced Texts

One recommendation all experts emphasize is choosing biographies suitable for your child’s age level. For Joe Saenz, a fifth-grade teacher from New Jersey, this can make a critical difference for your child.

“We can do a quick Google search and pull up a bunch of information, however, that information can be very lengthy, challenging to understand, and it’s not always reliable,” he says.

Both Saenz and Jordening favor the Who Is / Who Was series for older elementary readers, as it is both age appropriate and provides a fun read. Jordening graduates her students to this series after picture books. 

“They are simple yet engaging chapter books that motivate my students and introduce them more fully into the genre of biographies,” she says.

4. Actively Create Excitement for Your Child

While kids usually enjoy fiction books filled with interesting dialogue, some of them will be resistant to explore the stories of real people.

To combat this, Saenz recommends framing the biography as a mystery to be solved. “If the parents show their excitement to learn more about people through their biographies, the kids will also tend to show excitement,” he says.

Burke also suggests creating excitement by having your child write their own autobiography, with inspiration from titles such as Turning Pages . Children love to hear stories about themselves, so helping them to write their own life story at a young age can spark an interest in exploring the stories of others. 

5. Encourage More Exploration

Biographies help kids understand history and experiences through another person’s eyes, which may spark more questions from your child. If this is the case, Jordening recommends encouraging your child to dig deeper.  

“If they have more questions about the individual, model for them what it looks like to use research strategies online. Biographies often serve as a starting point for learning more about a passion,” she says.

Another way to put your child’s research skills into practice is to have them write a biography about a family member. Burke suggests having your child interview a family member to find out more about their life. Your child can then share their biography as a read-aloud with that family member or the whole family.   

Get started by shopping fascinating biographies for Women's History Month below! You can find more books and activities at The Scholastic Store .

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How Kids Can Learn to Write a Biography

Tetra Images - Daniel Grill/Brand X Pictures / Getty Images

Writing the Biography

• Making It Interesting

Adding Final Touches

Publishing the biography.

Many gifted kids love reading biographies, but there's no reason they can't write one of their own! If your child is one of those who loves biographies and also loves writing , then encourage them to write their own biography. Sometimes a child has a good idea of who they'd like to write about and sometimes they don't. Getting ideas on who to write about and gathering information on that person and the time in which they lived would be the first steps to writing a biography.

Once your child has gathered all the information they need, they need to come up with an "angle." This is what makes one biography substantially different from other biographies. Coming up with an angle just means figuring out the main idea of the biography or the point the biography will make about the person.

A good way to think about the angle or main idea is that it is one sentence that expresses the writer's opinion of the person. It is what the writer wants everyone to know or think about that person.

It is really like a thesis statement. For example, a child might want everyone to know that his grandfather was an honest, hard-working person who, in spite of many hardships made a good life for himself and his family.

That main idea can help your child stay focused on the details to include in the biography. After all, a lifetime is full of many, many events; they can't all be included. Which ones should be included? The ones that help illustrate the main idea! If the main idea is to show a person was hard-working, readers don't need to know all the details about the person's various pets — unless that person worked hard to take care of those pets!

Once your child knows the message they'd like to convey with their biography, they can write a short and simple outline that lists the events and details they want to write about. It doesn't have to be long or complicated or very formal. Even a list of events they'd like to write about will work quite nicely.

Making the Biography Interesting

What makes a biography interesting? We'd like to think that the story itself is enough to make the biography interesting, and that's sometimes true when we're writing a biography about a family member to be read by other family members. But how can your child make his biography interesting to others?

One way is to use specific words when possible rather than general words. For example, "car" is a general word, but "Mercedes" is specific. "Walk" is also a rather general word, but "shuffle" is more specific.

Encouraging your child to use more specific words will not only make the biography more interesting to read, but it will also help them expand their vocabulary.

Of course, it's not always necessary to use specific terms. Sometimes adjectives and adverbs can use used. For example, your child might write , "the old and rusted cars" or "walked slowly." The idea behind all this detail is to help a reader see and feel what the writer sees and feels.

The Read, Write, Think Web site has a great exercise sheet to help kids be more descriptive in their writing. But be sure to let them know that less can sometimes be more! In other words, tell them not to overdo it!

Once your child is done with his biography, there are some final touches they can add. Pictures are great additions to a biography. Family pictures can be collected from other people in the family, but how do you get pictures of famous people? The best way is to look for photos that are in the public domain . That just means that no one owns the copyright to the photos anymore, so anyone can use them.

Another final touch is to find a great quotation to start with, one that will get a reader "hooked." This can be something the subject of the biography (i.e. a grandparent) frequently said, or it could be a quotation from a famous author that reflects what your child wants to say about his subject.

Publishing can mean something as simple as printing out copies of the biography on a printer or getting it published as a book. It's actually easier to get it published than you might think.​  Bookemon.com is a wonderful place to go to get a book published. There are lots of "templates" to pick from and lots of biographies that you can take a look at. Books created there can be shared with everyone and anyone!

By Carol Bainbridge Carol Bainbridge has provided advice to parents of gifted children for decades, and was a member of the Indiana Association for the Gifted.

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What are biography and autobiography?

A biography is a text written about someone else's life (usually someone famous). An autobiography is a text written about one's own life .

Children in Year 6 may be taught the unit: 'Biography and Autobiography' as suggested in the Primary Literacy Framework.

Features of biographical and autobiographical texts

If a teacher chooses to concentrate solely on biographies, children will start by reading a range of biographies, either about various different people or just about one person.

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They will look at the features of a biography, which include:  

• Written in formal language
• Use of compound and complex sentences , containing connectives
• Written in the past tense and usually written in chronological order (in time order)
• Text split up into paragraphs (usually each paragraph will detail the events of each part of the person's life, for example: one paragraph to explain their childhood, one to explain their early adulthood etc.)
• Dates included so that the reader knows what happened and when
• Phrases such as: 'It is believed', 'It was thought', 'Many people claimed', 'There was a rumour that' etc. to show that history is based on stories that have been passed on over many years and some things cannot be stated as facts
• Pictures and captions

How do primary children study biographies?

Usually, children will be given photocopied texts to read and then they may be asked to text-mark the above features to show that they understand how a biography is set out and what is included.

Children may then be asked to choose their own famous person that they are interested in. They will be asked to find as much information about this person and make notes on them. Often teachers give children labelled spider diagrams to help children organise their information, but more able children may be asked to organise the information in their own way. An example of a spider diagram is below:

Children will then be asked to start drafting their biography , using the notes they have collected. Once they have done this, they will go through a process of editing their writing . Usually, a teacher will mark the first draft and write comments and suggestions on it to help them with this. Another method, is for pairs of children to swap their writing and then discuss with their partner how the writing could be improved.

Finally, children will write up their biographies in neat. They may plan how their finished piece is going to look, including title, pictures and captions. Children then produce their finished piece of writing, either on the computer or in their own handwriting.

Interviewing a family member of friend to write a short biography is a great writing activity for KS2 children.

There are also hundreds of wonderful biographies written especailly for kids to read – look through our pick of the best biographies and autobiographies for children .

Biography and autobiography are non-fiction texts . For more details how how non-fiction texts are taught in KS1 and KS2 see our parents' guide,  What is non-fiction?

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Biographies for Kids

Isaac newton.

• Occupation: Scientist, mathematician, and astronomer
• Born: January 4, 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England
• Best known for: Defining the three laws of motion and universal gravitation

• Gravity - Newton is probably most famous for discovering gravity. Outlined in the Principia, his theory about gravity helped to explain the movements of the planets and the Sun. This theory is known today as Newton's law of universal gravitation.
• Laws of Motion - Newton's laws of motion were three fundamental laws of physics that laid the foundation for classical mechanics.
• Calculus - Newton invented a whole new type of mathematics which he called "fluxions." Today we call this math calculus and it is an important type of math used in advanced engineering and science.
• Reflecting Telescope - In 1668 Newton invented the reflecting telescope . This type of telescope uses mirrors to reflect light and form an image. Nearly all of the major telescopes used in astronomy today are reflecting telescopes.
• He studied many classic philosophers and astronomers such as Aristotle, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, and Galileo.
• Legend has it that Newton got his inspiration for gravity when he saw an apple fall from a tree on his farm.
• He wrote his thoughts down in the Principia at the urging of his friend (and famous astronomer) Edmond Halley. Halley even paid for the book's publication.
• He once said of his own work "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
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