5 Faves: Expository Nonfiction Recommended by Jen Vincent
Animal Ark: Celebrating Our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures by Kwame Alexander and Joel Sartore (National Geographic, 2017) Kwame Alexander collaborated with National Geographic to bring us a picture book that blends stunning, unique photographs with rich language. The Animal Book: A Collection of the Fastest, Fiercest, Toughest, Cleverest, Shyest, and most Surprising Animals […]
5 Faves: Expository Nonfiction Recommended by Cathy Mere
When I was in school (okay, many years ago), we did a research report nearly every year. Teachers were pretty explicit about their process (which wasn’t always the same), and we just had to learn to follow the rules to get a good grade. It was a simple, albeit time-consuming, game. Across years of […]
5 Faves: Expository Nonfiction Recommended by Stacey Shubitz
I recently discovered five new expository nonfiction texts that teach young readers while delighting their ears with carefully-crafted words and dazzling their eyes with stunning illustrations. Can an aardvark BARK? by Melissa Stewart and Steve Jenkins (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster, 2017) I’ve come to appreciate the question and answer text structure for nonfiction books. Can an aardvark […]
Tackling the Personal Narrative, Part 2
On Wednesday, I wrote about some of the reasons students struggle to write personal narratives and provided ideas that might help them. You can scroll down to read that post. Today I’ll be discussing a resource that really helps young writers—mentor texts. You can save student work from year to year and share good examples […]
5 Ways to Share More Nonfiction with Your Students
For the last six weeks, I’ve been talking about expository nonfiction. I’ve presented a heap o’ research indicating that nonfiction in general and expository nonfiction in particular is more popular among elementary students than most of us might think. Simply put, what the children’s literature community calls broccoli, many kids call chocolate cake. In the comments […]
In the Classroom: What a Great Idea!
Don’t you just love this photo? Last spring, Fran Wilson (@mrswilsons2nd), a second grade teacher in Ohio, and her teaching partner Nicole Prater shared eight of my books with their students. The books had a range of text structures and features. After the class discussed the content of a book, Fran and Nicole asked the […]
Persuasive Writing Text Set
We all know the value of mentor texts, so when Jenny Lussier, the fabulous library media specialist at Brewster School in Durham, CT, tweeted this: I took her request seriously. Back in November 2014, I wrote this post about persuasive books. It describes how surprised I was when an article in Book Links included my […]
Behind the Books: More about Mentor Texts
A few days ago, as I was proofreading a report my husband had written for work, I looked past all the technical jargon and started to think about how it was structured. (What can I say. I’m obsessed with structure.) Like many expository nonfiction book for kids, it had lots of subheads. It also had […]
Behind the Books: Who’s the King of Mentor Texts?
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I’m a huge, huge fan of books by Steve Jenkins. His topics are fascinating. His art is absolutely amazing. His design is unrivaled in the kidlit world. Seriously, he’s a genius. Lately, though, I’ve noticed something even more remarkable about his body of work. Most of his […]
Behind the Books: All Writers Depend on Mentor Texts
Whenever I do a book signing, there are a few people who tell me that they dream of writing a book for children and ask how they can get started. I always give the same two pieces of advice: (1) join the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and (2) read 100 books in […]