Children's Literature Basics
Course
Nonfiction [8:25]
In this lesson, we will discuss nonfiction.
I'd like to talk about informational literature or non-fiction including biography and how we might make connections with that genre and the curriculum as well. If you remember, I believe the very first Newbery-winning book was a work of non-fiction, The Story of Mankind, yes. And in fact, the very first book published for children ever in 1657 called Orbis Pictus, or The World in Pictures, was a work on non-fiction designed to help teach children about the world. And the new Common Core skills certainly are highlighting the value of non-fiction literature for helping children process the volumes of information they're going to have to deal with in their everyday life in adulthood.
I personally find it engaging reading all around. I like non-fiction and informational literature. I find children's literature especially engaging because there are so many wonderful visuals and things are simplified and synthesized. I think there's a lot of potential here for fun reading as well as for instructional reading. And when you look at informational literature or non-fiction, I use the terms interchangeably.
You'll find there are many, many categories, many different ways to create a non-fiction book. Let me just talk about a few and how I might connect them with the curriculum. One for example, one very popular and common form of non-fiction is the survey book. This is a book that is basically an overview of a subject that presents everything you ever want to know, so to speak, but synthesized and distilled for young readers. For example, Karen Blumenthal a few years ago published a book called Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America. It's her exhaustive research and lots of visuals. I like that too; non-fiction has heaps of visuals, typically photographs. And here, you get a look at a law but also the social history of the United States and how girls and women fit in it. That's a survey, if you will.
Another form of the informational book is the photo essay. That's a book that is heavy on photographs, so much so that the photographs are part of the information. You're learning from the photographs and that's very popular with adults and becoming more so with children. For example, Sy Montgomery has published many including The Tarantula Scientist, full of great photographs typically by Nic Bishop, a photographer that works with her quite a lot, and those are so appealing for kids because of those visuals and that subject matter.
The concept book is a form of non-fiction that is also very appealing to the young child. I mentioned it earlier under picture books, it comes up again here because it's short and sweet, but it's all factual. It's a way to learn basics about a simple concept. For example, Steve Jenkins and What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? It's all about tails, all kinds of tails on all kinds of animals.
For older kids especially for social studies connections, there are many great writers who are creating social histories for children where we get—it's basically history but not from a fictional point of view rather from a research point of view. Susan Campbell Bartoletti, for example, has written a number of these. One, They Called Themselves The K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group is not a compelling title and it's a history of the KKK but against the backdrop of what's going on in America at that time, so a social history.
You'll also find non-fiction in the form of a storybook, a picture book that tells a story but it's a true story and those are very appealing especially to read aloud at library time. Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet is a wonderful example. I've shared that at many a Thanksgiving gathering when you were watching the Macy's Parade on television. That's a story you can read from cover to cover which is not always the case. Sometimes you're just dipping into the non-fiction book but in this case, the whole thing is beautiful.
You also find activity books are very common in this genre. How to books, How to Draw by Lee Ames, cookbooks, science experiment books; those have so much appeal for kids, whether using it for a maker workshop or for a science lesson or to demonstrate how to writing which is a form of writing kids often have to tackle. Those books are also part of non-fiction. And then the trivia book; I find this so popular when I was a classroom teacher. The Guinness Book of World Records, The Ripley's Believe it or Not, there's so many of these now. They're not great literature by any means, but they're full of interesting and odd and weird, funny, fascinating facts that are so browsable and sharable. You can really promote a lot of book sharing with trivia books, all factual.
Of course, reference tools and series books are also part of the non-fiction genre. We might not spend quite as much time on sharing those as literature but they are invaluable tools when it comes to modeling and demonstrating research. And let's not discount magazines, serials, and periodicals. Many of those are also non-fiction or informational and seemed very grown up to many kids who see magazines lying around the house and their parents read them but maybe have not experienced them themselves. Many magazines and serials are going online now, so that is something else to consider but they are the most current source of information and really fun for kids to explore.
Biographies are part of non-fiction, too. We don't want to forget those, the true story of real people and there are various ways to tackle biography whether it's in social studies or reading or literature, whether you're looking at The Voice That Challenged a Nation, Russell Freedman's biography of Marian Anderson and the civil rights backdrop. Or if you're exploring a picture book biography through for example Diane Stanley's Leonardo Da Vinci where there's rich visual illustrations on every single page as she tells his life story.
Or you simply want to gather a collective biography where many people are represented in brief. For example, Kathleen Krull has written many; Lives of the Presidents: Fame, Shame (and What the Neighbors Thought) is one example and that way, you can gather many famous people or people worth reading about to all in one book and that could be a model for what the kids could create too, with each person tackling a different person, writing one page, and then gather together as a class compilation.
Non-fiction books are wonderful for teaching visual and verbal access skills, how to use the index, the table of contents, the subheadings. Kids don't automatically know that and that is big on test taking time, so why not use an engaging and interesting non-fiction book of literature to model those attributes and to teach children how to process that information while at the same time having a subject that is interesting to them. Yes, non-fiction's great for research and building research skills but there are so many choices out there now. It's also fun for recreational and leisure reading, too. Let's not forget that.
Nonfiction encompasses a wide range of formats, topics, reading levels, and styles of books, with rich opportunities for integration in library and classroom instruction and students' reading experiences. Vardell uses the terms "nonfiction" and "informational literature" to refer to this group of books, which includes biographies, topical series books, the survey or subject overview book, photo essays, social history (sometimes known as literary nonfiction), activity or how-to books, trivia and fact books, and reference books.
This exercise connects the nonfiction photo essay book with students' visual literacy skills.
1. Select a children's photo essay book from your school library or public library. You might try books by Sy Montgomery, Seymour Simon, or Russell Freedman, or consult the nonfiction book awards lists found in the Resources.
2. Skim-read the book and identify a photo with which to practice your visual literacy skills.
3. Using the photo you selected, complete this Visual Literacy Exercise: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tp/VisualLiteracyExercise.pdf (compiled by Helena Zinkham, Library of Congress). This is part of the Researcher's Toolbox (https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/researchertool.html), suggested in the article, "Rigor and Visual Literacy," by Diane Cordell (School Library Connection [January 2017]: 16-18).
4. How might you use or adapt this exercise for instructional use? Write a few notes.
Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal (ALSC/ALA) http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/sibertmedal
Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children (NCTE) http://www.ncte.org/awards/orbispictus
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Children's Literature Basics: Visual Literacy & Nonfiction." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1960213?learningModuleId=1960216&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2122875
About the Author
MLA Citation
Vardell, Sylvia M. "Children's Literature Basics. Nonfiction [8:25]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, September 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1960213?learningModuleId=1960216&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1960213?learningModuleId=1960216&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 1960213