Behind the Books: Writing Science/Nature-themed Picture Books
While there are certainly exceptions, most nonfiction picture books fall into two broad categories—picture book biographies and science/nature-themed picture books. As I discussed last week, almost all picture book biographies feature a chronological sequence text structure and a narrative writing style. That means that if you’re writing a picture book biography, most of your big-picture […]
My Favorite Book of 2015
The Great Monkey Rescue by Sandra Markle is my favorite book of 2015. Truth be told, I’m a big fan of many of Sandra’s books, but I think this one really stands out. (Are you listening Sibert committee? I sure hope so.) Okay, I admit it. The book hooked me at first sight (on Alyson […]
Behind the Books: Blending Writing Styles
For the last few weeks, I’ve been discussing the two nonfiction writing styles—narrative and expository. Many great books fit snugly into one category or the other, but then there are the outliers. For example, some nonfiction books that are expository overall, include narrative sections at the beginning and end. And when you really think about it, […]
Behind the Books: Two Kinds of Expository Nonfiction
This week’s topic is one of my favorites—expository nonfiction. As far as I’m concerned, this is a golden moment for expository nonfiction because, in recent years, it’s gone through an exciting transformation. Once upon a time, it was boring and stodgy and matter-of-fact, but today’s nonfiction books MUST delight as well as inform young readers, […]
Behind the Books: Two Kinds of Narrative Nonfiction
I’ve written about narrative nonfiction many times before on this blog, and yet my ideas keep evolving. For a long time, I’ve felt that there are two distinct kinds of narrative nonfiction, but I was having trouble articulating the differences. Luckily, a Tweep came to my rescue. During a series of conversations with Mary Ann […]
Behind the Books: Author Purpose vs. Writing Styles
This year, I’m taking a close look at what I call the Nonfiction Triumvirate—nonfiction categories, writing styles, and text structures. For the last month or so, I’ve been focusing on Nonfiction Categories. If you missed the discussion, you can scroll down or use the search box to see past posts. Today, I was planning to […]
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: Classifying Nonfiction Is Messy
Update June 24, 2024: My thinking about nonfiction classification has evolved considerably 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. Since October, I’ve been talking […]
Behind the Books: Thinking About Nonfiction Writing Styles
According to CCSS, there are four types of nonfiction—literary, expository, persuasive, and procedural. But traditionally, writers have used terms like these as labels for various nonfiction writing styles. I like the word “styles” because it implies some sort of craft, some sort of decision-making process on the part of the writer. When reading a nonfiction […]
Behind the Books: More Struggling with Academic Texts
Back on June 9, I wrote this post after reading an article that really bugged me in Science. I received such fantastic feedback from readers here and on the I.N.K. blog (where I cross posted) that I decided to edit the post and submit it to Science’s Letters to the Editor section. I didn’t really […]