I Want This Blog to Be a Home For All Nonfiction Lovers, So Have Invited Will Fitzhugh here to tell you about his work with teenagers and nonfiction: After working in the Social Studies department at the HS in Concord, Massachusetts for ten years, I decided to start a quarterly journal for the history research papers [...]

I Want This Blog to Be a Home For All Nonfiction Lovers, So Have Invited Will Fitzhugh here to tell you about his work with teenagers and nonfiction: After working in the Social Studies department at the HS in Concord, Massachusetts for ten years, I decided to start a quarterly journal for the history research papers [...]

Read All the Way Through Chris Barton sent a comment last week asking how to contextualize Seeger’s stand against HUAC. How much is too much? How much is too little, which could result in a kind of unintentional misinformation? Originally I was drawn to a personal story about Seeger: how his childhood, rich in music [...]

Read All the Way Through Chris Barton sent a comment last week asking how to contextualize Seeger’s stand against HUAC. How much is too much? How much is too little, which could result in a kind of unintentional misinformation? Originally I was drawn to a personal story about Seeger: how his childhood, rich in music [...]

Let’s Try Out Several Versions Of the Same Sentence In my last post, and response to Tricia, I argued that there are three issues in judging non-fiction, and judgement in kids’ books tends to slant toward the first two. The three I listed were factual accuracy, Tricia stressed engagement, voice — literary qualities, and then [...]

Let’s Try Out Several Versions Of the Same Sentence In my last post, and response to Tricia, I argued that there are three issues in judging non-fiction, and judgement in kids’ books tends to slant toward the first two. The three I listed were factual accuracy, Tricia stressed engagement, voice — literary qualities, and then [...]

Nonfiction — And to Make Our Books Most Useful to Kids Have you all seen this piece on the SLJ site, http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6524475.html It matches what I have heard and seen with kids (remember my post about visiting the 5th graders and asking them how they would go about finding out if John Henry was real, and [...]

Nonfiction — And to Make Our Books Most Useful to Kids Have you all seen this piece on the SLJ site, http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6524475.html It matches what I have heard and seen with kids (remember my post about visiting the 5th graders and asking them how they would go about finding out if John Henry was real, and [...]

Betsy In Informational Overload After looking at picture book biographies that are comparable to what I’d like to do with  Pete Seeger, I dive into research.  First goal: an overview of Seeger’s life.  I read How Can I Keep From Singing, a biography by David King Dunaway. It came out in 1991, so it’s missing [...]

Betsy In Informational Overload After looking at picture book biographies that are comparable to what I’d like to do with  Pete Seeger, I dive into research.  First goal: an overview of Seeger’s life.  I read How Can I Keep From Singing, a biography by David King Dunaway. It came out in 1991, so it’s missing [...]