Nonfiction

Marta Braun on Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with motion photography.

Why should we study primary source documents? These are artifacts created by the people who lived through the events and time periods under study. Providing students the opportunity to study primary sources can give rise to student inquiry and encourage them to speculate about each source, its creator, and the context in which it was produced. The Library of Congress has millions of primary source documents and tools for teachers and students to dig into, 24/7.

Lita Judge poses 12 prehistoric creatures with modern people or animals in compelling support of the observation that dinos came in a great range of sizes.

Can a reference book win the Newbery? Yes, it can, according to Jonathan Hunt of the blog Heavy Medal.

Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson. Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster. 2013. Personal copy. One of my “vacation reads” — books for the grown ups, reviewed around holidays, when you may want to take time off from reading young adult books. It’s About: Sylvia Plath before [...]

Scientists encounter amazing phenomena in their work. Narrative nonfiction provides readers with answers and teachers with informational texts for curriculum standards support. The following science titles, selected by the editors at Junior Library Guild, are sure to foster an interest in knowing more about our world, and the scientists who study it.

A few years back, I mourned the loss of Google’s New Timeline. I still miss that beautiful visual presentation, but you can still use Google News to search contemporaneous news. Contemporaneous news offers students unfiltered, personal connection to the past and forces them to wrestle with issues of bias and historical perspective. Contemporaneous news focuses a media literacy [...]

SLJ's book review editors selected the best nonfiction titles of 2013. Here you'll find rich primary source material, engaging narrative style, and sophisticated design. Historical giants as well as little known figures are profiled in this list of distinguished informational books.

Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes blogger, with news about Nonfiction Monday.