Comments on: More On Our NF and Adult NF

By: Marc Aronson

Marc Aronson — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:57:36 +0000

Linda: Yes, I see it the same way — you can mine the academic book, but it is harder to break away from the adult narrative nonfiction, even though you have to.

By: Linda Zajac

Linda Zajac — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:18:35 +0000

I just finished reading an academic book written by a scientist for other scientists. It was filled with an exhaustive amount of information and lots of charts to decipher. I fell asleep a few times while reading it. I can’t imagine too many adults would be interested in this book. The format was not a captivating story so it would be inappropriate to duplicate that format for kids. Also, aside from some decent photographs, there was little that could be used in a children’s book. To write science articles, I’ve also used books written by scientists that were meant for adults. These are more interesting to read and are often stories, but they contain far too much information. I believe it is best to get all the facts from whatever source and try to find the story you want to tell from those facts without letting the existing format of a book written for adults cloud your best judgement. For me, it’s easier to find a story from an academic book where no story exists versus an adult book that may have a story that works.

By: Marc Aronson

Marc Aronson — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:15:01 +0000

Jeannine: thanks that does sound like a fine book and good example.

By: Jeannine Atkins

Jeannine Atkins — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:55:58 +0000

I think a great example of how a nonfiction book for adults can be reimagined for children is How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming. Lynne Cherry, who’s written more than 30 books about nature for children, read Gary Braash’s Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World, and apparently proposed working with him on a book for children, drawing from some of what he’d seen as he conducted interviews and took pictures around the world starting in 1999. The book is framed around the kinds of questions scientists ask, and give overviews of some of their interesting experiments. Often citizen scientists, including children, are shown gathering information. The featured experiments emphasize evidence we can see such as cherry blossoms, tree rings, monarch butterflies, and harlequin toads. The stunning photographs help keep things from getting too abstract. This book becomes as much about the scientific process, clearly explained, as the findings, and I think the attention to hope is another way they tried to make this valuable for a young audience.

By: marybk

marybk — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:33:44 +0000

One value touched on in the suggest to mine an adult book is studying the structure rather than only the content. Titles of chapters and the flow of information offer useful information about what to include or, conversely, what to omit. And the index also is helpful to pick up items of interest to young people. But I agree–an adult book has to be reimagined. I love that word!

By: Marc Aronson

Marc Aronson — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:34:10 +0000

speaking as a person who wrote a very lengthy dissertation, and never turned it into a book, I know exactly what you mean. In the diss, more is more — you always want one more fact, citation, example. In a book, you need a compelling argument.

By: wrigleyfield

wrigleyfield — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:39:39 +0000

I really agree with your point that reimagining a book for children (using the adult book as a source of insight and ideas) is the way to go, rather than “adapting” an adult book for children.

An analogy in academic publishing is that one can usually spot the books based on dissertations, because they are usually more boring than they need be. Few academics want to start the book arising from their dissertation research “from scratch” (although of course it isn’t really that, since they’ve been thinking about the topic for years), but it produces vastly better books.

By: Dan Allosso

Dan Allosso — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:05:52 +0000

Wouldn’t it be a little difficult to convince an editor to go ahead with just another book about dinos, if you didn’t have something new and interesting to show? If there was a cool new discovery, that could be related to a younger audience, but why would you repackage a mainstream product that’s already a review of the known?

Going back to history, if you had a new interpretation of the events of the Revolutionary War, like THE REAL REVOLUTION, you’d tell that story and refer to the work being done in academic history. I thought that worked well. So a new paradigm in the adult genre is presented to young readers, keeping them up to date with what’s current in the field. But it’s not particularly sugar-coated or dumbed down, is it? It’s just presented without technical jargon, and with illustrative examples or metaphors that resonate with the audience. The bigger question, I think, is: what’s relevant and important for these readers, what are they interested in, and why?