Celebrate Nonfiction

Exploring the Joy of Nonfiction Reading and Writing

5 Faves: Expository Nonfiction Recommended by Mindi Rench

Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Infographics by Steve Jenkins (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

When I shared this book with my
third graders, they could not get enough of it.  I would see pairs of kids
excitedly talking about the amazing comparisons Jenkins makes throughout the
book. We also used it as a mentor text for different ways of comparing and
showing data when we were writing our own informational books about animals.

 

A Beetle is Shy by Diana Hutts Aston (Chronicle,
2016)

With beautiful illustrations by
Sylvia Long, this picture book gives an in-depth look at many different kinds
of beetles. The format is easy for young readers to navigate, and the information
is presented in such a way that kids will want to learn even more about many of
the beetles introduced here.  

Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins (Scholastic,
2010)

Steve Jenkins is a popular author
among my students, and for good reason. In Bones, Jenkins
illustrates the bones and skeletons of many different kinds of animals and
explains how they work.  Many of the illustrations compare the bones of
different animals, including humans. It’s fascinating reading.

Pink is for Blobfish: Discovering the World’s Perfectly Pink Animals by Jess Keating (Knopf, 2016)

This was another book we examined
closely as a mentor text for informational writing. The photography is amazing
and the writing is engaging—just right for the young readers in my classroom. Also,
who can resist a book with a blobfish on the cover?

This Is How We Do It: One Day in the
Lives of Seven Kids from Around the World
by Matt LaMothe (Chronicle, 2017)

Kids love to read about other kids.
 After I shared this title with my students, they had lots of questions
about aspects of the children’s lives that weren’t covered in the text. This
provided an opportunity to do further research about what life is like in the
places featured by LaMothe.



Mindi Rench is a third grade teacher at Greenbriar Elementary School in
Northbrook, Illinois. When she’s not reading books to share with her students,
she’s cooking dinner, walking her dog, or driving her daughters to dance
classes.

 

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