Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities Dave Grohl has decided to tell these stories just as he has always done, in his own voice. The joy that he has felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that he has recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing his voice bounce between the Kiss posters...
Author
Language
English
Description
"An arresting memoir about what it means to come of age at the center of exultant bloodlines and harrowing bloodshed. Written in a distinctive voice and filled with personality, humor, and pathos, Fruit Punch is a memoir unlike any other, from a one-of-a-kind millennial talent. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Kendra Allen had a complicated, loving, and intense family life filled with desire and community but also undercurrents...
Author
Pub. Date
2010
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.1 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Description
Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.
Author
Language
English
Description
"After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.7 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Description
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town,...
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town,...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Description
A middle grade memoir from a living literary legend, giving readers a new perspective on the origins of Gary Paulsen's famed survival stories. His name is synonymous with high-stakes wilderness survival stories. Now, beloved author Gary Paulsen portrays a series of life-altering moments from his turbulent childhood as his own original survival story. If not for his summer escape from a shockingly neglectful Chicago upbringing to a North Woods homestead...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 3.7 - AR Pts: 4
Language
English
Description
"Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future . . . but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day. Heartbreak,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Even before he knew how to make a proper omelet, Eric Ripert was a young boy in the South of France who felt that his world had come to an end. The only place he felt at home was in the kitchen. His desire to not only cook, but to become the best would lead him into some of the most celebrated and demanding restaurants in Paris and trying to survive the brutal, exacting environment of their kitchens.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.6 - AR Pts: 7
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"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...
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
"From the Academy Award-winning screenwriter and political activist, a candid, vivid, powerfully resonant memoir about growing up as a gay Mormon in Texas that is, as well, a moving tribute to the mother who taught him about surviving against all odds. Dustin Lance Black wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, but as an LGBTQ+ activist he has unlikely origins. Raised in a military,...
11) Free lunch
Author
Series
Memoir (Rex Ogle) volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 3.7 - AR Pts: 7
Language
English
Description
"A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day...
13) On the horizon
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Description
"From two-time Newbery medalist and living legend Lois Lowry comes a moving account of the lives lost in two of WWII's most infamous events: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. With evocative black-and-white illustrations by SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner Kenard Pak. Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this stunning work in verse...
14) Carmen and Grace
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Carmen and Grace have been inseparable since they were little girls--more like sisters than cousins, survivors of a childhood marked by neglect and addiction and a system that never valued them. For too long, all they had was each other. That is, until Doña Durka swept into their lives and changed everything, taking Grace into her home, providing stability and support, and playing an outsize role in Carmen's upbringing too. Durka is more than a...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Mildred Armstrong Kalish's "Little Heathens" is a compelling memoir of her hardscrabble life on an Iowa farm during the 1930s. With no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.
Author
Language
English
Description
"'A stirring, vividly told story of a young woman's quest to find the family she lost...an impressive debut'-Peter Balakian; Born into poverty in southern New Jersey and raised in a commune of single mothers, Mary Anna King watched her mother give away one of her newborn sisters every year to another family. All told, there were seven children: Mary, her older brother, and five phantom sisters. Then one day, Mary was sent away, too. Living in Oklahoma...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"Beautiful Country is the real deal. Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you."--Gish Jen, author of The Resisters. "Ba Ba told me this and I in turn carried it in my heart: so long as we didn't stake claim to what wasn't ours--the things, our rooms, America, this beautiful country--we would be okay." An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's...
Author
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. His mother and father often sat in the same room but exchanged no words. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn't come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but unspoken. And on a cold night just before Christmas...
Interlibrary Loan Request
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Des Moines Public Library can be requested from other libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? If the item was published recently, submit a purchase suggestion. Submit Request