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Key Terms
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Adulatory  excessively admiring or devoted to; the characterization of the subject of a biography must be true to life, neither adulatory nor demeaning in tone.
Antiheroes  individuals who lack the characteristics of heroes.
Archival photographs  historical photographs stored in an archive.
Authentic biography  a well-documented, carefully researched account of a person's life.
Collective biography  a biography that includes biographical information about more than one person, often organized by a theme.
Complete biography  complete biography spans the subject's lifetime. It may be relatively simple or difficult, authentic or fictionalized, but the reader should expect a view that has some depth, some balance, and some sense of perspective.
Debunking  to expose as false or exaggerated.
Demeaning  to degrade or humiliate.
Eulogy  high praise.
Fictionalized biography  fictionalized biography is grounded in thorough research, but the author dramatizes certain events and personalizes the subject, in contrast to the straight reporting of authentic biography. Fictionalized biography makes use of the narrative rather than the analytical approach.
Invented dialogue  dialogue that has been created from the author's imagination.
Multidimensional  having many different characteristics; great people are likely to be multidimensional.
Original source material  material that has come directly from its original source.
Oversimplification  simplified to the point of distortion.
Partial biography  a biography that focuses on only one part of a person's life; authors are able to focus, if they wish, on a time of high drama and let the demands of constructing a good story help set the time frame for the book.
Primary source  a first-hand source of information, a person or a document directly related to the subject of the research.
Simplified biography  a biography, usually short and with many illustrations, published in response to the needs of beginning and less-able readers.
Superficial in scholarship  lacking rigorous research methods.
Vignette  a short, but complete, story.
Worthy of emulation  deserving of being admired and imitated.







Kiefer Child Lit 9eOnline Learning Center

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