The "Who Was?" Series: Behind the Books
If you have ever tried to get a reluctant middle school reader into nonfiction, you probably already stumbled across the Who Was? book series. The short answer is that Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver built it as a bridge between biographical reference and straight-up narrative fiction. They wanted kids to pick up a biography without feeling like they were doing homework. The format is deliberately simple. Each book runs about 200 pages with short chapters, plenty of black-and-white illustrations, a timeline on the inside cover, and a reading-level glossary at the back. Lin Oliver handles the heavy editing and development side, while Henry Winkler brings his background as a children's author and his own experience with dyslexia to make sure the prose stays accessible. They do not write every book themselves. Instead, they created the framework and sign on other professional children's writers to fill the titles. I worked with a teacher who used these books for a remedial reading program around 2014. She told me her kids were finishing the books in one to two weeks each, which was unusual for that group. The chapter breaks are short enough that a kid who struggles with sustained attention can actually finish a chapter without losing the thread. That was not an accident.
The real trick is the reading level. These books are targeted at grades 4 through 7, but the actual reading difficulty sits closer to a middle-school level where students can handle complex ideas without being patronized. The sentences are not dumbed down. The vocabulary is reasonable. The structure just avoids walls of text and keeps the pace moving. One detail that catches people off guard is the illustration style. The drawings are stylized, almost cartoonish, but they are packed with period details and visual jokes that reward a second look. A kid might read for the story and then flip back to find a tiny detail in the artwork that explains something about the subject's life. That visual layer matters more than most educators realize. Here is a practical problem I ran into when I tried to track down the full publication history. There are two separate but related lines. The main "Who Was?" line has over 400 titles covering historical figures, scientists, celebrities, and even some fictional characters. Then there is the "Who HQ?" spin-off line, which targets slightly older readers with longer, more detailed books. People confuse them constantly. When you are building a library or a classroom set, you need to know which list you are ordering from because the Lexile ranges and content depth differ noticeably between the two.
Another thing worth noting: the series does not pretend to be the final word on any subject. Some historians have pointed out legitimate gaps and occasional simplifications. The books prioritize engagement over exhaustive detail, which means they work best as a first exposure rather than a research source. If a student picks up a Who Was? book about, say, Harriet Tubman, and then goes on to read a more comprehensive scholarly biography, that is exactly the path the series is designed to create. I once had a parent ask me whether these books were appropriate for a gifted reader. They are. The series actually includes an entire sub-line called "Who Was, What Was, Where Is?" and the "Who HQ?" line pushes into more nuanced territory. But even the standard books have enough density that a strong reader will find room to dig deeper rather than being bored by oversimplification. There is no single official website that functions as a centralized hub for everything these books offer. HarperCollins is the publisher, and you can find the catalog through their children's division. Individual book pages are scattered across major retailers and library systems. The most practical approach is to browse by subject rather than by trying to follow a master list, since new titles are added regularly and older ones occasionally go out of print.
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The series has sold millions of copies and spawned an audio line, a television adaptation in development, and a companion magazine. That expansion is worth watching because it shows where the content ecosystem is heading. The core product, though, remains the books. They fill a space that many publishers ignored for a long time: middle-grade readers who needed something that respected their intelligence while still keeping the pages turning.
