This article is centrally focused on teaching biography to second grade children in new and intriguing ways. In this article, the authors discuss the use of a multimodal integrated visual art and literacy curriculum in student investigations, interpretations, and writing of biography. Section one describes the wider project of conceptualizing an integrated art and literacy program and briefly describes the process in which teachers (including Tricia, one of the authors of this article), with some input by a university professor (Lawrence) and his doctoral student (Susan), constructed the curriculum. In section two the authors delve into the curriculum development process in more detail, which included a yearlong course in theories of reader response, art elements and design, and how they view the concept of literacy. They discuss the framework of the units of study they developed for Diego Rivera and Jacob Lawrence, which culminated in the student biographies (all student names are pseudonyms). Section three describes the elements of teaching and learning that resulted in the children's acquisition of the concept of biography, and presents evidence of student responses in a number of genres and modes. The authors end with some general conclusions about the insights they gained including: (1) the importance of multimodality in thinking about biography; (2) the richness of such curricular units as they meet the standards and contents of a number of different curricular areas; and (3) the ways in which certain of these types of lessons could be implemented in a more scripted curriculum. (Contains 1 figure.)