Navigating Award‐Winning Nonfiction Children's Literature

Abstract

Nonfiction children's literature has changed in recent years, including an increase in organizational, design, and text features. The authors conducted a content analysis of 112 nonfiction award‐winning and honor books from 2000 to 2018 to examine how the books have changed over time. The authors discuss the patterns, changes, and complexities found in nonfiction children's literature and provide text sets and guiding questions for classroom instruction and exploration of three features that appear in books in a variety of ways and may be challenging for students: atypical text, graphics with information, and supplemental expository information.

Recursive readings and reckonings: kindergarteners’ multimodal transactions with a nonfiction picturebook

“…Additionally, the boys spent their reading workshop together deciphering the images of this nonfiction picturebook, demonstrating that young children use a range of texts, including nonfiction (Palmer and Stewart, 2005), to continuously negotiate various understandings about the world. Lucas' and Maddox's readings of New York City (Hanigan and Chandler, 2012) suggest that we need more research examining young children's negotiations of meaning and responses to all kinds of texts, nonfiction picturebooks included (Smith and Robertson, 2019).…”

“…In addition to the lack of research examining children's multimodal responses to books, there is an abundance of information about how children respond to fiction texts (Apol, 1998;Sipe, 2008) but relatively little exploring responses to nonfiction (Shimek, 2019;Smith and Robertson, 2019). This finding remains consistent despite an emphasis on informational texts in national standards [Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS), 2010] and an increased call for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in schools (Gewertz, 2012).…”

(Info)Graphically Inclined: A framework of infographic learning

“…The proliferation of more complex visual graphics, such as infographics, in nonfiction texts has continued to increase in recent years (Smith & Robertson, 2019). Infographics designed for younger audiences are appearing in children’s magazines, informational texts, and nonfiction picture books.…”

“Not Just For Us Nerds”: Examining Elementary Teachers’ Perspectives of Contemporary Children’s Nonfiction

“…Though visuals have been important since the publication of Orbis Pictus -the first nonfiction picture book for childrenin the 1600s (Kiefer & Wilson, 2011), synergy between words and pictures in nonfiction picture books has increased in recent years, especially in books published since 2011 (Shimek, 2018). Smith and Robertson (2019) also observe that design elements such as dialogue balloons and graphics containing information have become more frequent in nonfiction books published since 2010. Further, many newly published nonfiction books have "some kind of challenging characteristic" like the presence of multiple genres or supplemental information presented in different ways (Smith & Robertson, 2019, p. 198).…”

“…Book awards like the Orbis Pictus (National Council of Teachers of English) and the Sibert Medal (Association for Library Service to Children) acknowledge the outstanding quality of nonfiction books published for today"s children. Although nonfiction has been changing since the late 1990s and early 2000s (Moss, 2003), additional changes to the genre have been documented more recently, such as the increase in graphics, text features, and synergy between visuals and text (e.g., Gill, 2009;Miller, 2013;Smith & Robertson, 2019;Shimek, 2018).…”