Reading biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and diaries teaches people one of life’s most valuable lessons. Writers who share their autobiographies usually have interesting stories to tell about their lives’ trials and tribulations. Every life has a beginning, a middle and an end, and how one has lived should greatly interest readers who are still at the beginning of their own lives.

Exploring biographies through children’s literature offers an enriching experience that motivates children and adolescents to learn and critically reflect in new ways. Reading biographies not only provides them with valuable new perspectives but also encourages their own self-discovery. In learning about other people’s lives, young readers make comparisons and consider differences, and they come to understand the lives of not only famous scientists or artists but also ordinary people through their failures, successes, challenges, feelings and emotions.

Contemporary research emphasises a shift in children’s books towards a more innovative, historical, and interdisciplinary approach, which also offers meaningful messages about environmental and social activism.

This project aims to investigate this shift in children’s fiction and non-fiction. It also seeks to explore interdisciplinary research methodology through which biographical studies can help expand children’s literary horizons.