Biographies for Eighth Grade

Biographies for Eighth Grade: Twenty Remarkable Men and Women

Twenty remarkable men and women have their life stories told in vivid and lively detail, briefly enough to fit into a Main Lesson! Eighth grade is the time of revolutions in the modern world and Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Mohandas Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and others fill the pages of this valuable resource with the stories that define the individuals who changed our world and our culture. If you love stories and the stories of great men and women and are looking to engage your teenagers with riveting tales of heroes, you need to look no further than this little tome! Even if you are not a teacher in need of bold ideas for biographies, you will enjoy this book. It’s inspiring to read of those on whose shoulders we stand in our modern world.

• John Harrison – 18th Century England
• Eli Whitney – 18th/19th Century United States
• Sequoyah – 19th Century North America
• Simon Bolivar – 19th Century South America
• Benito Juarez – 19th Century Mexico
• Frederick Douglass – 19th Century United States
• Harriet Tubman – 19th/20th Century United States
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton – 19th Century United States
• Clara Barton – 19th/20th Century United States
• Marie Curie – 19th/20th Century Poland/France
• Janusz Korczak – 19th/20th Century Poland
• Mohandas Gandhi – 19th/20th Century India
• Hellen Keller – 19th/20th Century United States
• Mao Zedong – 20th Century China
• Nien Cheng – 20th Century China
• Jomo Kenyatta – 20th Century Kenya
• Nelson Mandela – 20th Century South Africa
• Martin Luther King, Jr. – 20th Century United States
• Cesar Chavez – 20th Century United States
• Wangari Maathai – 20th/21st Century Kenya

Each chapter has one or more illustrations by students from the San Francisco Waldorf School.

About the Author

Susan Cook, a Waldorf teacher for many years of both elementary and high school classes in San Francisco, shares her experience and story telling skills with this rich and diverse selection of biographies and the tales well told in this book. A native of northern California, Susan and her husband have three grown children-all Waldorf graduates. She has traveled to East Africa more than once to help in the development of Waldorf education there and incorporates her deep and rich experience in her retelling of the lives of these remarkable people.