Preparing for our 4th Quarter Research Project

My students have been acting out, co-creating and reading stories about famous people this quarter.  Our end of the quarter, qtr 3, project is to write and present our Autobiographies in French to the class.  Students have been reading stories about famous people that I wrote in the first person to help them with this process.  This past week they began to brainstorm ideas for their autobiography and fill in an outline in French.  

I am trying to build up their vocabulary in order to make the jump from Autobiography to Biography easier.  We are reviewing some basic vocabulary and sentence structures for talking about our: families, schools, interests, jobs and careers for the future.  I now need to start searching for good reference material in French that is written at a more basic level, like an encyclopedia written for younger students.  I am not sure how to do my google searching for this and am hoping to create a list of great reference materials in French on French famous musicians/good sources for youth.  I want to avoid having students find information and just cut and paste it into a bad free online translator site.