Chapter 12: Nonfiction

Chapter 12: Nonfiction

Nonfiction is a large genre which covers a multitude of subgenres and spans many different forms/formats. The paramount importance when evaluating nonfiction is the accuracy and currency of the works. This is a huge reason that librarians have to reevaluate and weed their nonfiction collections frequently. The first question that you should ask when evaluating nonfiction is what are the qualifications of the author? This is important because the author’s knowledge of the subject matter they are reporting on is first to look at. There are authors that have background in the subject or content area that they write about, while there are other nonfiction authors that are well known for writing on many different subjects through rigorous research. Some of the ways to evaluate what type of author and qualifications they have is looking at the book jacket, author’s notes included in the back, and the author’s website. You can also see what other text features included in the book like a reference section or bibliography. The next question to ask yourself is Are the facts accurate? This is important to ask yourself and do your own research to back up the quality of the facts in the book. There are many lists and resources to use as references for collection development or selections for classes. The next evaluation piece is What is the purpose and scope of the book? You need to evaluate the purpose which surrounds the audience and topic while the scope would focus on how broad or narrow the author focuses on this topic. The next criteria is How does the organization of the book assist readers in locating information? This question can help you answer how the chapters help organize the information through things like table of contents, indexes, suggestions for further reading, timelines, and extra information. These are often called “back matter” which gives extra information or credits their sources. The last question to ask yourself is What role do visuals play? This is important to see if the books are involving visuals for anatomy and identification, are the visuals adding humor to information, are the visuals help the reader understand the information better (not overwhelmed or slapped in the face with a block of text). The visuals in exceptional nonfiction books add to the text and understanding of readers using photographs, illustrations, and various text features. All five of these questions help you evaluate nonfiction books that you decide to put on your shelves.

Reflections:

Teaching quality nonfiction is one of my very favorite things to teach because while I am not a huge historian or scientist I love to experience quality information with rich text features to learn. There is nothing worse than reading a text book that is a big block of text and feel like you don’t understand at the end of the page. One of the things I particularly liked about this chapter is “what kind of teacher do you think the author would make?” This question made me laugh as a previous teacher because the nonfiction books that I loved and continuously went back to for classroom use explored their topics with humor and rich text features to make the reading more involved and exciting. One of my favorite nonfiction series by Georgia Bragg is the How they Choked: Failures, flops, and flaws of the awfully famous and How they Croaked: the awful ends of the awfully famous. When teaching middle school, I would choose excerpts from these books to explore text features, research, and use of figurative language and tone with my students. It was always great to explore these books with kids and see their reactions to the illustrations and the Fact pages at the end of each chapter. The are told in a narrative style as if the author somehow personally knew each subject of her work- which I am sure she did after the amount of research and sources presented in the book. These types of nonfiction are becoming more and more popular and produced now as most of our curriculum focuses on nonfiction and informational text. It is important to keep in mind all of the questions to evaluate to help you choose what books are right to use in your curriculum and the ones that the students will enjoy the most.