Nonfiction

Fred Smith, a junior at Vidor (TX) High School, needed to find something written by an author after 1960 for the Oral Interpretation portion of a prose and poetry competition. He found Francesco Marciuliano's I Could Pee on This, and Other Poems by Cats (Chronicle Books, August 2012) fit the bill. Smith's drama teacher, Adam Conrad, reports that his student recently placed first at the District 20 AAAA level Oral Interpretation contest and has advanced to the Regional level that will be held April 20, 2013 at Sam Houston State University, as part of the Texas UIL (University Interscholastic League) Prose and Poetry Competition.

Alfred Green’s 1950 film, made at the height of Robinson’s career, is in the public domain...

In these books, educators will find solid choices to support some aspect of the Common Core State Standards. Most of the publishers have made a noticeable effort to address the standards and relate math to everyday experiences, giving readers connections that help them engage with the texts.

The fall of 2012 was a strong season for new series in American history and geography. In comparison, the spring of 2013 has a small turnout. However, that does not mean that these books are also-rans. Quite the contrary is true.

Ever responsive to changing fads in educational theory, nonfiction publishers are, with varying success, already tweaking their new titles to conform to the Common Core science standards. These efforts range from inserting a few vague ideas for activities or demonstrations into otherwise conventional surveys of well-traveled informational territory to festooning texts with review questions, primary-source documents, photos and graphics, and suggestions for ongoing projects or lines of thought.

In the spirit of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, these sports and exercise-related books encourage children to keep active and avoid obesity. Students will find inspiration in titles about their favorite teams, players, competitions, or forms of exercise.

With a few notable exceptions, the entriesin this mixed bag of high-tech offerings are aimed at casual readers enthralled by images of big, noisy machines–preferably the sort that carry guns and bombs.

Biographies are the perfect tools with which educators can engage students and ask them to think critically about how important figures affected the past and the world today. The Common Core State Standards mean that children and teens need strong options from which to choose when faced with having to write reports or research papers.

Any elementary school librarian can tellyou that trying to keep books in the 590s in reasonable order is a herculean task. However, that’s not a negative. Children in this age range devour books about animals.