Celebrate Nonfiction

Exploring the Joy of Nonfiction Reading and Writing

Behind the Books: A Look at Concept Books

Update June 24, 2024: My thinking about nonfiction classification has evolved since I wrote this post, but I’ve decided not to delete it because there’s value in looking back at my past ideas. For my current thinking, please see the book 5 Kinds of Nonfiction as well as information on my website.



For the last few of weeks, discussing what I
consider to be the four main categories of children’s nonfiction literature (life stories, survey books, specialized
nonfiction books, and concept books). You can scroll down to see the
earlier posts.

Today, I’ll focus on the final category,
concept books.

These books explore an abstract idea or
process, and in many cases, offer unique perspectives or new ways of seeing
things. This approach works well for picture books about life cycles, seasons,
animal behavior patterns, math concepts.

Here are some popular concept books to read and
study:

Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

Just a
Second by Steve Jenkins

Lifetime by Lola
Schaefer

Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in
Nature by Sarah C. Campbell

No Monkeys, No Chocolate by Melissa Stewart

A Place
for Butterflies by Melissa Stewart

Seeing Symmetry by Loreen Leedy

A Star in
My Orange by Dana Meachen Rau

Trout Are Made of Trees by April
Pulley Sayre

Next week, I’ll share
a simple exercise that can help both student and professional nonfiction
writers choose the best category for their next writing project.

Stay tuned.

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