Frank Carlson Library

Forrest Carter recounts his childhood years, when he was raised by his Cherokee grandparents and imbued with the sense of communion between the Indians and their land.

The author recalls his experiences as a migrant laborer and carnival worker after he ran away from home at age sixteen.

David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless untamed boys who grew up in Middle America at mid-century. Whether he's stalking snakes in the bogs of Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, leaping garbage cans for a beautiful little redheaded girl, or joining Chucky Dutcher for a movie marathon at the Erwin Theater, Benjamin is the kind of precocious ironist who would have found...

While in Charlestown Prison in the 1940s, young Malcolm Little reads all the books in the library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam, and emerges as Malcolm X.

At the age of eleven, Michael Keith left a stable life with his mother and sisters and set off to cross the country with his irresponsible hobo of a fathera real bum. The memoir, narrated without sentimentality by this funny, world-wise little boy, describes their life on the roadthe characters they meet hitching rides, their adventures with bed bugs in Salvation Army bunks, the joys of finally encountering a decent meal, and the periods when Michael's...

"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him -- most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear.What were they afraid of? In Tremble for My Country, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments...

An early-morning workout becomes an enchanting adventure when a record-holding swimmer reunites a baby whale and its mother. An inspiring, irresistible story for all ages, from the beloved author of Swimming to Antarctica. It's five o'clock in the morning and still dark. Swimming outside the wave break off the Catalina coast, training for her next long-distance swim (she has already crossed the English Channel twice), 17-year-old Lynne Cox senses...

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers a memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. He lives up to his reputation as a "contrary warrior" by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Fortunate Eagle attended Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, just as Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier's pluralist...

Ever since Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee emigrated from South Korea to the United States, she's felt her otherness. For a while, her English wasn't perfect. Her teachers can't pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes--especially her eyes--feel wrong. In high school, everything gets harder. Friendships change and end, she falls behind in classes, and fights with her mom escalate. Caught in limbo, with nowhere safe to go, Deb finds her mental health...

"When Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in high school, he was part of a program that sent students to be counselors at a camp for seriously ill kids and their families. Going into it, Jarrett was worried: Wouldn't it be depressing, to be around kids facing such a serious struggle? Wouldn't it be grim? But instead of the shadow of death, Jarrett found something else at Camp Sunshine: the hope and determination that gets people through the most troubled of...