Melissa Stewart writes: "If you’re a longtime reader of Celebrate Science, you may remember that back in 2012 and 2013, I spent a lot of time trying to develop a Nonfiction Family Tree. This effort to categorize and understand the various kinds of nonfiction and the interplay among them was heavily influenced by the ideas of such nonfiction thought leaders as Marc Aronson, Myra Zarnowski, Sue Bartle, and Mary Ann Cappiello.
Eventually, I gave up on the family tree and started to think about other ways to classify nonfiction, but recently I decided to take a fresh look at the tree analogy, and I came up with something that I think is worth sharing..."
Via Mary Reilley Clark
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Melissa's post and her follow-up here made me think about my ongoing frustrations with our nonfiction section. ****NB: Melissa just shared this wonderful article she wrote for SLJ. It gets at so much of what bothered me as an elementary librarian, when students are steered away from non-fiction to chapter books.**** We have so many incredible books that just don't circulate. I do a lesson with 6th graders similar to speed dating in which they browse tables full of books, but even though they enthusiastically check those out, they rarely wander through the nonfiction shelves on subsequent visits.
It's still in development, but I am going to use Melissa's post about teaching the different types of nonfiction in a new lesson. We talk during the genre speed dating lesson about how you can drill down into subgenres: "I like the mystery genre, but I focus on the forensic subgenre myself," or "Yes, I read historical fiction, if you consider alternative history a subgenre of that." (We use our best pretentious voices while stating our preferences.) Now it's time for a lesson on the kinds of nonfiction!
I still remember my neighbor and current 8th grade student discovering narrative nonfiction last year. He was one of many students who considered himself a non-reader because he doesn't like reading fiction. (Or rather, he doesn't like reading teacher-assigned whole class novels.) After he read Unbroken, he came back for The Boys Who Challenged Hitler, The Nazi Hunters, The Port Chicago 50, and many more. He told his teacher, "I didn't know narrative nonfiction was a thing, but now I know what I want to read."
First up, I will make more specific resource lists for students to highlight narrative nonfiction, etc. Next, we'll get busy on some displays, and perhaps make it a goal to have a nonfiction display every month.
I'm grateful to Melissa for getting the wheels turning on this!