Best Biography Books for 5th Grade

Fifth graders who like true stories will find a strong mix here: memoirs told in verse, graphic memoirs and picture book biographies of people who changed their communities. Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming recalls her childhood in short free-verse poems, while Phillip Hoose's Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice tells how a teenager refused to give up her bus seat months before Rosa Parks did. Pedro Martín's Mexikid and Dan Santat's A First Time for Everything bring the same honesty to comics. Every book on this page has earned a major children's or young adult book honor.