Media blitzes have changed our world. The information age threatens to turn our children into fact gatherers, biograhies for young audiences can make sense of the past. Biographies accent the stories of individuals who have hopes and dreams, struggles and difficulties, and utlimately some kind of success. Today's famous are a narrow band of sports figures and celebrities, but there are whole fields of endeavor children might not think about celebrates celebrities and sports figures gatheriographies are the best way for children to learn about the past. Seeing other eras through individual lives brings a depth of knowledge that learning facts can't approximate. In these days where seeking information is stressed, it's easy to lose meaning. Personalizing history through knowing its people is the best way to make history live. People from the have much to teach our children about succeeding in the present.

Biography collections, a form unusual to find in adult books, provide great learning for children. Most often organized by subject, they can show differing perspectives and how those viewpoints are effected by era and background. Often these biography collections deliver a sum greater than their parts,as in true in three new releases. Ann Bausum's Our Country's Presidents (National Geographic Society, $24.95; ages 8 and up) 0-7922-7226-9 devotes one to three pages to each president. The book has a slick-paged, picture-rich, sound-byte presentation children like. It also has facts, humor and trivia which unite to give a sense of the individuals and their times. For example, Ulysses S. Grant, known for his aggressive Civil War attacks "disliked hunting and got sick in his father's tanning shop". A photo shows four men resting in the oversized bathtub that was installed in the White House after 332 pound Taft got stuck in the standard-sized one. When the forty-three presidents are described between the covers of one book, children see the overall significance of how these leaders have served and changed our country.

Artistic women are the focus of two new biography collections. Leslie Sill's In Real Life: Six Women Photographers (Holiday House, $19.95; ages 11 to adult) shows how a photograph, commonly thought to capture reality, becomes a complex communication tool in the hands of artists who are skilled in intuition, technique, and composition. Imogen Cunningham arranged images to stress the emotional and spiritual nature of people and objects. Dorthea Lange, who suffered polio and the loss of her father at an early age, produced powerful photographs because she was able "to understand the suffering of others." Carrie Weems' pictures record the truths of the African-American experience and invite viewers to reflect on their own lives. Sills, a sculpture and art lecturer, knows creative and critical aspects of art intimately and weaves her knowledge into the biographies of six very different women all with the imagination and resourcefulness to turn life into art.

While Sill accents innovation, Roxane Orgill's focus on the artistic struggle in Shout, Sister Shout! Ten Girl Singers Who Shaped a Century (McElderry Books, $18.00; ages 11 to adult). Orgill's passion for music and dedication to research come through in her lively celebrations of the lives ten women she chose to represent each decade of the twentieth century. She doesn't hold back, discussing Ma Rainey's bisexuality, Judy Garland's drug addiction, or Madonna's provocative image. With ten pages per artist, Orgill puts together stories of women who have struggled against poverty, prejudice, politics, and appearance to assert their unique voices and contributions.

Four new books add to Carolrhoda's Picture the American Past series, making fourteen volumes which focus on children. Holly Littlefield's Children of the Orphan Trains shows the confusion and helplessness of orphaned children sent west from 1854-1929. Catherine Welch's Children of the Civil Rights Era focuses on children who tell of the fear they felt and others who mustered courage to protest their conditions. Sylvia Whitman's Children of the World War II Home Front describes the difficulties families encountered and how children improved personal and national situations. Holly Littlefield's Children of the Indian Boarding Schools describes the physical, emotional, and cultural horrors the relocated children faced, the strategies they used to survive, and how today's schools are working to preserve the culture. (all from Carolrhoda Books, $22.60; ages 8-10) Each page is filled with monochromatic historical pictures and few words. Though simple in sentence structure, these books don't ignore harsh facts and they choose poignant quotes from children to illustrate situations.

A more traditional biography, Tom Lalicki's Spellbinder:The Life of Harry Houdini (Holiday House, $18.95; ages 8-12) clearly shows how Houdini's poor and uncertain beginnings shaped his life. When his rabbi father brought the family from Hungary to find a congregation in America, life was a continuous search to find work to feed his family of nine. These early experiences drove Houdini's almost frantic determination to succeed and his ability to face any struggle. Struggle Houdini did and he overcame poverty and a doubting public as well as straitjackets and specially made handcuffs . Houdini's ingenious escapes are only part of his story. Lalicki shows Houdini's superhuman efforts as a man who possessed ingenuity, pride, work ethic, and devotion to family. The entire book proves its final quote by Houdini's wife, Bess, who said of her legendary husband, "Every conjuror knows how his tricks were done. It was Houdini himself that was the secret."

A boy's youth is the subject of Andrea Warren's Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps (HarperColins, $16.95; ages 10 and up). At twelve, Jack Mendelbaum's successful father sent his family to the countryside to escape their Nazi-occupied Polish town. He told Jack, his eldest son: "I am counting on you to take care of our family." Jack did his best to support his family, taking on the tasks of grown men. For two Jack to kept his promise until he faced the "worst moment" of his life when his actions separated from his mother and brother forever. Alone at Blechhammer concentration camp, Jack's quick thinking and positive attitude helped him survive hunger, cold, sadistic guards, unbearable duties, and the sorrows of those around him. He uses memories of boyhood competitions to beat "Hitler at his game". Above all his primary strategy "was not to allow myself to hate. I knew I could be consumed by hate." Mandelbaum has followed this approach his entire life; he's taken "tolerance and forgiveness as the themes of my life", working with others to recognize and stop evil so that "there is hope for humanity."

Service, leadership, creativity, surviving struggles well, determination, family love, pride in work, courage, positive attitude, tolerance, forgiveness and hope. What better models of living could we wish for our children?