Nonfiction

We’ve suffered from a dearth of adult nonfiction for teens this year, but today I am thrilled to bring you a great recommendation. In fact, Dr. Mütter’s Marvels shares some of the very best qualities of Mary Roach’s iconic Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, especially a gross-out curiosity factor and great story-telling. Add a larger-than-life subject and [...]

Diversity in YA has received a lot of attention recently, thanks to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks hashtag that’s evolved into a formal organization for activism and awareness. Brandy Colbert’s debut YA novel, Pointe was published just two weeks before the influential hashtag was born. Excellent timing because Pointe isn’t only a novel with a narrator of color; it’s a novel [...]

Get political with Ken Burns’s newest documentary, The Roosevelts, find out how Megan Shepherd’s “Madman’s Daughter” trilogy ends, and change how you see rainstorms with April Pulley Sayre’s Raindrops Roll with the November stars, which offer the best of fiction, nonfiction, and multimedia.

Under the Common Core State Standards students need quality nonfiction to support class assignments and they need to know how to read it. So where is it?

These picture books examine groundbreaking baseball player Lizzie Murphy, the true story of the bear that inspired A.A. Milne’s classic “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories, and a gorgeous, seasonal look at Jewish holidays.

This month’s nonfiction profiles a wide variety of people—and animals. Students will find a trove of information in Albert Marrin’s beautifully researched biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while those with an artistic bent will enjoy Catherine Ingram’s quirky, illustrated looks at Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and Jackson Pollock. And don’t miss the adorable Unlikely Heroes, which covers some truly courageous creatures.

This season’s nonfiction has forced us to think outside the box when it comes to forming benchmarks for good nonfiction, as the books tackle subjects in new and fascinating ways, as well as take on the issue of diversity.

Capstone’s notable “Captured History” series has highlighted significant periods in history through arresting photographs, such as Tank Man and Migrant Mother. SLJ caught up with authors of several of the set’s titles to get the back story on these memorable, thought-provoking works

Backed by solid research and bolstered by top-notch writing, these books offer material on U.S. history, from the youngest readers to the oldest.