Nonfiction Books for Teens Adapted from Adult Bestsellers

Fans of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken may also enjoy The Boys in the Boat. It tells the story of an eight-man crew team made up of working-class boys at the University of Washington during the Great Depression. Not only did this underdog team defeat the elite East Coast American teams, but its members went on to challenge Germany in the 1936 Olympics.

Defeating the team rowing for Hitler carries extra resonance given the event’s timing on the brink of World War II. The narrative will be of interest to your students who are interested in both sports and history. But even if those aren’t your students’ go-to genres it’s an uplifting and inspiring story that highlights the power of determination in the face of adversity.

Bonus Suggestion: Show your students a YouTube video or two of rowing competitions if you’re not from a part of the country where rowing is a popular sport. This strategy paid dividends when our southern California students read W.D. Wetherell’s “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant.”

During the racial reckoning that took place mid-pandemic after the death of George Floyd, we made an effort to read a number of books expanding our understanding of systemic racism in America, which introduced us to Kendi for the first time. His memoir tells the story of his efforts to challenge his own thinking but helps readers understand what it truly means to be “antiracist” rather than just “not racist.” More importantly, he goes beyond race to explore the ways it intersects with color, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, and how those intersections play out in many aspects of society.

The adaptation for young readers is a collaboration between Kendi and Nic Stone, author of Dear Martin, which was a huge success with our students during the pandemic. In addition to making the original text more accessible to younger audiences, Stone adds extra notes and commentary in the margins. 

We’ve made no secret of our love for Noah’s memoir and its relative success as a schoolwide read when we returned in person from our time in distance learning during the pandemic. The original is outstanding, presenting stories of Noah’s life growing up biracial during apartheid in South Africa in a way that manages to be informative, thought-provoking, and incredibly hilarious. We still laugh out loud remembering Noah’s stories of his short-lived stint as a DJ, his awkward attempts at dating, and, of course, the time his mother threw him out of a moving car.

It’s a book we knew our students would probably love, but the YA adaptation made it a nonfiction book for teens we felt more comfortable recommending during First Chapter Fridays as it omitted the profanity. Noah’s obvious love for his mother and their close relationship resonated strongly with our students.

We absolutely loved Stevenson’s memoir about his work for the Equal Justice Initiative and saw the 2019 film version in the theater together. Stevenson’s work to ensure death row inmates are treated with justice and grace was inspiring and heartbreaking, and it made us rethink our understanding of the criminal justice system in America. The main story is that of Walter McMillian, a young Black man sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit, but Stevenson weaves in stories of his other clients, allowing him to address issues like the treatment of minors and the mentally ill in our criminal justice system.

We had a lot of ideas for working Stevenson’s text (or the film based on it) into a unit on Elie Wiesel’s Night before the COVID-19 shutdowns that left us scrambling to just survive. Prior to considering using it as part of our Night unit, we had a few copies of it on hand in our classroom libraries and the book was popular with our students.

We really enjoyed Grann’s original text about the series of murders that befell Osage tribe members who owned oil-rich land in the 1920s. These wealthy tribe members lived lives of luxury, traveling in chauffeured cars and sending their children to European schools, but Mollie Burkhart’s family begins dying off under mysterious circumstances (as do people who attempt to investigate the killings), leading the brand-new FBI to hire Texas Ranger Tom White to investigate.

The book reads like a true crime novel, but we also learned so much about our country’s treatment of Native Americans, the FBI, and life in 1920s Oklahoma. We recommended the original to our AP seniors as a First Chapter Friday selection, and appreciate there is now a version for younger students as well.

This book, originally published and very popular when Kate was in high school (eek!), received a significant update in 2018. Loewen’s overview of the version of American history presented in the most commonly used textbooks is both eye-opening and discouraging. He highlights key events in US history that are presented inaccurately and argues that these inaccurate presentations play a role in the low appeal history has for many students. Despite the popularity of the original edition, Loewen found minimal change when he revisited the core texts in 2018.

Loewen mentions multiple times the powerful impact his book has had on students, who often wrote letters in response to his study, and it’s exciting to see his work, which addresses the impact of historical inaccuracies on our nation’s youth, adapted to be more accessible to the very people he discusses.

Kendi’s original is an absolutely riveting must-read, but it is dense and detailed. We were excited to see an adaptation for younger audiences and were curious to see what would make the cut in this much shorter, much less dense nonfiction book for teens. Having found the original so powerful and enlightening, there were, of course, parts of the original we were disappointed to see omitted in Reynolds’s adaptation; however, Reynolds did an impressive job of holding on to the essence of the original while softening the message for younger audiences.

Kate read it with her son before he was old enough to read it himself (and before there was another adaptation for even younger audiences). He was engaged and curious throughout and came up with many thoughtful insights as a result of exposure to Kendi’s ideas. We suggest recommending Reynolds’s version to all your students, and for those who finish it but are left wanting more, pointing them to Kendi’s original. 

Side Note: Reynolds, who intentionally writes books for “kids who don’t read,” is always a student favorite, no matter the subject matter.

We don’t often think of ourselves as big nonfiction fans, but apparently, what we like, we like a lot. Another one of our favorites, Hillenbrand’s original biography is one of our top reads. When we were searching for a text to use in updating our curriculum for 9th grade honors, we decided to give the young adult version a go.

Our students loved the story about a mischievous kid who becomes an Olympic runner, is shot down over the Pacific Ocean and stranded at sea during World War II, and then is taken captive in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and the adaptation tones down some of the more graphic stories while still giving readers a clear sense of Zamperini’s harrowing experiences. Students enjoyed the multiple lifetimes worth of experiences that made up Zamperini’s one remarkable life. Zamperini is a role model of determination and optimism, and based on their writing about the biography, students got a lot out of the experience.