Nonfiction for

Young Readers

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Defining Nonfiction
for Young Readers

Children and adolescents have a desire to know, and when they

discover that books are a place to find answers, they embark on a journey
of lifelong learning. They turn to nonfiction literature to feed their hunger
for facts, ideas, and concepts. The term nonfiction describes books of
information and fact about any topic. Nonfiction books are distinguished
from fiction by their emphasis. Although both may tell a story, and both
may include fact, in nonfiction, the facts and concepts are uppermost,
with storytelling perhaps used as an expressive technique. In fiction, the
story is uppermost with facts sometimes used to support it. The key lies
in the emphasis of the writer, which in nonfiction should be on the facts
and concepts being presented. It is these that must be truthful, verifiable,
and understandable.

Nonfiction for children today is abundant, particularly nonfiction

storybooks. There has been an enormous increase in both the number of
nonfiction trade books published for children and the breadth of topics
covered. Writers select topics that interest children, and many of the
topics they select fit nicely into an existing school curriculum. In the last
ten years, a push for including more nonfiction reading across the
curriculum has led to increasing work with nonfiction in English and
language arts as well as in the increasing work in nonfiction in English
and language arts as well as in content area classrooms. It also has drawn
attention to the various types of nonfiction, from argumentative prose to
literary non-fiction, and the importance of exposing children to all types.

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 Regardless of particular type, nonfiction books today invite reads
with spacious, well-designed pages and intriguing illustrations that
enhance and extend the reader’s understanding of the topic. The texts
often present writing at its best interesting language used in varied ways.
Metaphor and descriptive language allow readers to link what they are
reading about with what they already know. The structure of nonfiction
varies widely. Some books fictional devices to interest young readers in
the topic at hand, introducing fantastical characters. Other use a
narrative frame to impart information or create parallel texts with fictional
story matching factual information. There are other structures that clever
writers use to support their goal—to impart information to readers.

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 Brief History of
Nonfiction
for Young Readers

Although the horn books of the mid-sixteenth century were

designed to instruct children in reading and religion, the first widely
adopted book of nonfiction was John Amos Comenius’s compendium of
information that he believed every child should know, Orbis Sensualium
Pictus (Illustrated World of the Senses). Comenius a Moravian churchman,
advocated relating education to everyday life by emphasizing contact
with objects in the environment and systematizing all knowledge. His
Orbis Pictus was the first book in which pictures were as important as the
text-- the first picturebook.

In the United States in the early nineteenth century, there were

series such as the Boy’s and Girl’s Library that were a combination of fact
and fiction; by mid-century, biographical series such as the Makers of
History books were read by both children and adults seeking to fill in the
gaps in their own education(Marcus, 2008a). Other biographical series
followed; with the end of World War II came the debut of the Landmark
series, a few biographies mostly focused on important episodes in
American history. Following Sputnik, other series such as Crowell’s Let’s
Read and Find Out books became extremely popular. These combined

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interesting information, often about science topics, within an easy-to-read
framework.

Nonfiction as we know it today began to come into its own in the

1980s with advances in printing that allowed nonfiction writers to
illustrate their books in a variety of ways, including photography. Books
such as the science series for elementary-school readers introduced by
John Wiley and Sons became more easily available and were snatched
up by schools and parents eager to feed their children’s hunger to know
about the world. The power of a photograph was showcased in Russell
Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiography(I-A) and may have inspired an
increasing movement of “photo-history” books (Bader, 2011)—books that
chronicle the story of historic movements, individuals, and events with
original photographs, engravings, and period illustrations. At the same
time, the topics, events, and experiences that nonfiction covered were
becoming increasingly diverse. Tom Feelings’s Middle Passage: White
Ships/Black Cargo (A) and other historical nonfiction told stories of women,
African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, of workers as
well as bosses, and of the myriad “unsung” historical events (Marcus,
2008a).

When Milton Meltzer questioned the obvious bias of award

committees toward fiction in his “Where Do All the Prizes Go? The Case
for Nonfiction” (1976), professionals in the field took notice. The Boston
Globe-Horn Book Award added a category for nonfiction in 1976, and
the International Literacy Association’s Children’s Book Award did as well
in 1995. The Orbis Pictus Award, established in 1990 by the National
Council of Teachers of English and the Robert F. Sibert Award establish in
2001 by the American Library Association, honor outstanding nonfiction

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titles, including biography. ALA’s young adult division (the Young Adult
Library Services Association, or YALSA) added an Excellence in Young
Adult Nonfiction Award in 2010 to honor the best nonfiction books for
ages 12 to 18. Nonfiction is now recognized as the artistic and literary
achievement it can be.

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