Akron Public Library

Dave Pelzer, victim of one of the worst child abuse cases in California history, tells the story of his adolescent years after he was removed from his home and placed in foster care, and discusses the influence on his life of Dan Brazell, the man he came to regard as his father.

Boy, Roald Dahl's bestselling autobiography, is full of hilarious anecdotes about his childhood and school days. With fabulous new line drawings by Quentin Blake. "An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography". (Roald Dahl). This reissue includes 30 delightful new line drawings by the inimitable Quentin Blake. Throughout his young days at school and...

A memoir about growing up in the rural western United States without in-door plumbing, electricity, or telephone.

"Twelve and still 'man of the family' Ralph talks his mother into letting him take a summer job on a Colorado cattle ranch, and this is the story of that summer. One gets every phase of the work on the home ranch, where Little Britches earns the right to be called Ralph, and treated like a responsible adult." Kirkus.

"Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it's probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she's dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina's tummy trouble isn't going away... and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What's going...

After Burroughs was adopted by his mother's shrink at age 13, his childhood took a turn for the bizarre with electroshock machine fun and games; month-long family/patient sleep-overs on the front lawn; a physician-assisted fake suicide attempt to get excused from school forever; and a pedophile living in the barn. Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her...

"Drama, family secrets, and a KGB spy in his own kitchen! How will Yevgeny ever fulfill his parents' dream that he become a national hero when he doesn't even have his own room? He's not a star athlete or a legendary ballet dancer. In the tiny apartment he shares with his Baryshnikov-obsessed mother, poetry-loving father, continually outraged grandmother, and safely talented brother, all Yevgeny has is his little pencil, the underside of a massive...

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people-and the times-that touched her life.

"From a childhood survivor of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit."--Dust jacket.

"'Everyone was moving to Denver, which was mushrooming all over the prairie and giving every evidence of becoming a metropolis of real proportion." So recalls Elizabeth Young of her childhood on Colfax Avenue. Her youth ran parallel to that of her hometown: She grew up in the 1890s, in the midst of Denver's rapid metamorphosis from frontier town to modern city. Young's memoir provides glimpses of the people and events of this era, along with the adventuresome...