Nonfiction For Children Research Articles

Niet Eens Een Labjas? De veelstemmige verbeelding van wetenschappers en technologen in hedendaagse jeugdliteratuur. [Not Even a Lab Coat? The Polyphonic Imagination of Scientists and Technologists in Contemporary Youth Literature.] by Frauke Pauwels

Reviewed by: Niet Eens Een Labjas? De veelstemmige verbeelding van wetenschappers en technologen in hedendaagse jeugdliteratuur. [Not Even a Lab Coat? The Polyphonic Imagination of Scientists and Technologists in Contemporary Youth Literature.] by Frauke Pauwels Toin Duijx NIET EENS EEN LABJAS? De veelstemmige verbeelding van wetenschappers en technologen in hedendaagse jeugdliteratuur. [NOT EVEN A LAB COAT? The Polyphonic Imagination of Scientists and Technologists in Contemporary Youth Literature.] By Frauke Pauwels. Universiteit Antwerpen, 2021, 391 pages. ISBN: None In 2021, Frauke Pauwels obtained her doctorate under strict COVID-19 measures at the University of Antwerp for a study about the imagination of scientists, among others, in contemporary children’s literature. Her dissertation (in Dutch) was published by the university and can be read online: file://vuw/Personal$/Homes /D/duijxawm/Downloads/179365.pdf. The Flemish government has put enormous efforts into stimulating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), in particular STEM education and STEM careers. Children are strongly encouraged to develop STEM skills from an early age. Children’s literature studies have been neglecting this topic. In her research project, Pauwels tries to fill that gap by analyzing images of science, technology, and its practitioners that have been spread through (mainly) Dutch children’s fiction and nonfiction for children. In the first chapter, Pauwels describes the context in which children are growing up nowadays. STEM policies can be situated within the transition toward a knowledge economy. Studies on STEM attitudes indicate that young people value science and technology; however, they do not consider building STEM careers. Several research projects showed that children who are interested in science are considered as nerds, as different from other children in their peer group. In children’s media, scientists tend to be presented as the alchemist, the idealist, the stupid virtuoso, the unemotional scientist, the adventurer, the mad scientist, or the helpless scientist. The second chapter discusses the way readers interpret narratives and engage with characters. Pauwels uses concepts and insights from cognitive and affective poetics to describe the connection of textual mechanisms with children’s readings and cognition, and refers to analyses and the corpus dealing with STEM characters. The next chapter gives an overview of the way prototypical scientists are represented in contemporary children’s books. She brilliantly analyzes children’s books in which scholars appear and shows that these are often very stereotypical in clothing, setting, and register. Scientists always seem to be wearing a lab coat, and most of them [End Page 77] are men, women being much less common. In chapter 4, Pauwels presents a second series of analyses. She demonstrates that several books of the corpus also offer stepping stones for empathy or identification with scientifically and technologically oriented characters. The portrayal of children as akin to scientists, or as scientists in becoming, as well as the suggestion that scientists differ from other people, is the most recurrent motif in the studied corpus. In the last chapter, Pauwels concentrates on the special topic “Children, Climate Change, and Science.” Children and youth have been united behind the science during climate debates and protests all over the world. In society and literature, children are symbolizing hope for the future and have been cast as saviors of the world. Nevertheless, science and technology are not part of the solutions in fiction. In several examples of the corpus, children’s acts on the basis of care and enchantment are rewarded, but scientists who help save the world can barely be found. Frauke Pauwels concludes her engaging and well-documented dissertation on a hopeful note: while science and technology are mostly represented as objective and rational, children’s literature adds other qualities to the scientific mindset, such as paying attention to nature, being curious, feeling enchanted, and caring for other beings and for the environment. That way, children’s literature can contribute to give another view on the aspects of STEM and prepare children for a changing society in which these aspects play an important role. Toin Duijx Leiden University Freelance staff member of the International Youth Library Copyright © 2023 Bookbird, Inc

Reading Poison: Science and Story in Nazi Children's Propaganda.

Children’s books of Nazi propaganda prove that a society can venerate science to the point of making biology the organizing principle of its educational system yet nevertheless produce children’s literature shot through with fabrication and falsehood. Three children’s books of Nazi propaganda that are frequently mentioned in accounts of anti-Semitism but seldom analyzed are discussed: Elvira Bauer’s Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid (1936), Ernst Hiemer’s Der Giftpilz (1938), and Hiemer’s Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (1940) illustrate the ways in which racist science and ideological narrative tautologically reinforce each other in an extreme version of how “narratives play a key role in communicating science” (Pauwels, 2019, p. 434) in children’s nonfiction. These texts of lurid racism, all issued by the book publishing arm of Julius Streicher’s virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, offer a monitory case study of how bad science and toxic narrative can coalesce into a literary poison intended to indoctrinate young readers. This analysis of Nazi nonfiction for children demonstrates how science and story can be exploited to promote a racist agenda.

A Literature of Questions. Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders

Reviewed by: A Literature of Questions. Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders Jutta Reusch and Nikola von Merveldt A LITERATURE OF QUESTIONS. Nonfiction for the Critical Child. By Joe Sutliff Sanders. University of Minnesota Press, 2018, 274 pages. ISBN: 1-5179-0301-7 Mainstream opinion holds that nonfiction is a literature of answers—especially nonfiction for children. Accuracy of facts is then allied with didactic intent to produce doubt-proof authoritative books claiming to tell things as they are. In his game-changing study, Sanders argues that books adhering to this creed produce less truthful accounts than nonfiction books that invite critical engagement by asking questions and reflecting the process of inquiry. His argument is not ideological, however, but theoretical. Sanders is the first scholar to propose a theory of nonfiction, along with "a method for examining children's nonfiction from a literary perspective" (7), which "looks for where a text is willing to invite its readers to dialogue, to negotiation, to the testing of information to critical engagement, and where it is not" (12). Following a clear-sighted introduction situating his theory within the relevant literary and pedagogic debates, Sanders develops, tests, and expounds his theory over seven chapters. In the first chapter, he critically considers what it means to understand nonfiction as a literature of authority and makes the provocative claim that nonfiction shouldn't be a literature of facts at all. If it is to truly educate young minds, it should invite them "to the dialogue of intellectual work," "to involve them in the analysis and production of knowledge" (44). Based on this argument, Sanders examines formal and aesthetic aspects of nonfiction, which either rebuff or invite critical engagement. In chapter 2, he considers the literary category of voice and shows how visible first-person authors voicing doubt and allowing for alternative perspectives rupture authority and encourage questions. Chapter 3 focuses on the characters of nonfiction, and thus on its human dimension. By presenting knowledge as something provisional produced by fallible humans rather than a collection of immutable, objective facts, critical nonfiction engages both the reader's intellect and emotion. Having identified the timeless rhetorical hallmarks of a literature of questions and thus provided a useful analytical tool kit, Sanders goes on to consider peritexts (chapter 4) and photography (chapter 5) as potential sites of engagement typical for contemporary fiction. The multiple peritexts, such as sidebars, footnotes, or afterwords, he claims, invite nonlinear reading, which in turn promotes critical engagement. Photographs, commonly believed to be true depictions of reality, can draw attention to their artificiality through captions or layout. In a close reading of Russell Freedman's photobiography Lincoln (1987), Sanders demonstrates how photographs in nonfiction can encourage readers to examine the visual information critically instead of simply seeing through them. The last two chapters offer an in-depth case study of Tanya Lee Stone's nonfiction book Almost Astronauts (2009). According to Sanders, this award-winning US title perfectly illustrates the conflicting cultural conceptions of what [End Page 103] children's nonfiction should be; it attempts a delicate balancing act between the commercial demands of the schoolbook market asking for a literature of answers and the aesthetic and intellectual ambitions of the author who wants to challenge and inspire her readers to ask their own questions. The conclusion addresses the question literary historians prefer to avoid: Are children actually capable of engaging critically with nonfiction? Several empirical studies have found that they are and readily do so, even if not prompted by adults. However, adult guidance encourages and improves critical literacy. This is why, in his last paragraph, Sanders urges us all to "invite critical engagement and foster it where we can because doing so is democratic, respectful, and humanizing" (230). Sanders celebrates the "democratic potential" of nonfiction (231). Sanders's theory makes an important contribution to an underestimated and undertheorized field children's literature criticism is only beginning to discover. His provocative claim that nonfiction shouldn't be about facts at all will help overcome the dead-end debates trying to assess the accuracy of facts. His sound theoretical framework, his practical analytical tool kit, and his celebration of the "democratic potential...

Reading as a Scientist: Children's Nonfiction through a Cognitive Lens

Reading as a Scientist: Children's Nonfiction through a Cognitive Lens

Teaching the Key Traits of Expository Nonfiction With Children's Books

AbstractTo craft engaging nonfiction prose, young writers should focus on a specific idea or concept of interest and use acclaimed children's books as mentor texts to help them understand options for developing their ideas. In this article, the authors provide examples of high‐quality children's nonfiction for exploring various formats and text structures and for developing effective expressive voice and rich language—all craft techniques associated with excellent expository informational writing and consistent with the Common Core State Standards. Specific discussion questions and activities are included.

A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders

Reviewed by: A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders Gretchen Papazian (bio) A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child. By Joe Sutliff Sanders. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. I have been waiting for a book like Joe Sutliff Sanders's A Literature of Questions for a long time. A deeply layered, complex scholarly study of literary nonfiction for children and young adults (aka trade nonfiction), it fills a gap in the study of the genres of literature for children and young adults by creating a structure for understanding nonfiction that parallels the deep and complex discussions of fiction and poetry. It identifies salient features and delimits tools and techniques for analysis, while it also models ways of working with them. Perhaps even more importantly, it makes a highly convincing argument for reconceptualizing how we think about nonfiction and its purposes. Over the course of an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion, Sanders examines a broad range of American nonfiction texts for children, from the colonial-era to the contemporary, to determine the generic features that invite or deter reflective engagement with facts. Broadly oriented through Paolo Freire's notion of critical engagement and its role in democratizing educational structures, as well as Mikhail Bakhtin's description of textual dialogism and Roland Barthes's poststructural understanding of textual exegesis, Sanders argues that looking to how and when children's nonfiction invites or refuses questions reveals what ways of thinking, feeling, and knowing a text [End Page 493] is willing to make vulnerable—that is, which ideologies it opens to critical inquiry and which ones it avoids. In then identifying and working with a portfolio of devices, or what Sanders calls "a set of hallmarks," A Literature of Questions creates a methodology for revealing where and how nonfiction for children and young adults makes efforts to share and humbly humanize (or hold on to and arrogantly objectify) epistemological authority. In the book's introduction, Sanders gracefully weaves together a massive amount of scholarship, contextualizing his project within discussions of children's nonfiction, children's literature more broadly, genre theory, notions of ideology, the possibilities for and histories of radicalism in literature, and theories of learning, all the while delineating his own approach, justifying his textual selection and analysis methods, and clarifying and defining terms both established ("critical," "engagement," "critical engagement") and novel ("punctuated plurality"). Chapter 1 begins developing the book's perspective by engaging with one of the most basic assumptions about what nonfiction is and what it should do—that is, to provide information and answers. In demonstrating that disciplines of facts never see themselves as having the final answers but are instead engaged in "fact cycles" that circuit through question sequences, while emphasizing that nonfiction is a genre with great potential to engage children and young adults in this very activity, Sanders asks that children's literature scholars, teachers, and writers reorient our most basic sense of this genre: from being a literature of authority to one of inquiry, from being "a literature of answers" to "a literature of questions." In the remaining chapters, Sanders pinpoints and investigates specific aspects of nonfiction for children and young adults that consistently mark where texts actively invite or, depending on how they are used, purposely discourage critical engagement. Chapter 2 looks at the devices of voice, tone, and narrative—specifically, the use of "hedges" to break textual authority, visible narrators to humanize the text's mindset, and what scholar Samuel Wineburg calls "necromancers" to generate a sense of plurality and/or an unfinished conversation. Chapter 3 fixes attention on the textual construction of character (broadly defined) in nonfiction for children, arguing that texts that represent their central figures as imperfect, "touched by vulnerability," prone to mistakes, and "in the light of becoming," while dwelling on the long process of discovery and unfinished inquiry, are more likely to invite critical engagement. Chapters 4 and 5 shift attention from narrative aspects to textual apparatus, with the former attending to peritextual features and the latter fixing attention on the genre's deployment of photographs. Chapters 6 and 7 turn the spotlight on the epistemological operations of the...

Exploring Soil. A Hidden World Underground. (Children's Non‐fiction (primary school age)). By S.Grover & C.Heisler (ed.). Published by CSIRO Publishing, Clayton South, Vic., Australia, 2017, Hardback £19.95 pp. 32 (ISBN 9781486305001).

Soil Use and ManagementVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 163-163 Book Review Exploring Soil. A Hidden World Underground. (Children's Non-fiction (primary school age)). By S. Grover & C. Heisler (ed.). Published by CSIRO Publishing, Clayton South, Vic., Australia, 2017, Hardback £19.95 pp. 32 (ISBN 9781486305001). D.S. Reay, D.S. Reay david.reay@ed.ac.uk Search for more papers by this author D.S. Reay, D.S. Reay david.reay@ed.ac.uk Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 December 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/sum.12388Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume34, Issue1March 2018Pages 163-163 RelatedInformation

The Availability of Access Features in Children's Non-Fiction

This study analyzes the availability of access features in children's non-fiction as compared to their prevalence in adult non-fiction because such features are an important part of the research process increasingly demanded of younger and younger students in schools. Access features studied include: table of contents, index, bibliography, endnotes/footnotes, glossary, and suggestions for further reading list. This study found that children's non-fiction books were less likely to include bibliographies or endnotes, but more likely to include glossaries or suggested reading lists. Tables of contents and indexes were the two most popular access features in each section. Results are divided by Dewey Decimal Classification classes.

Er fagbøger en del af børnelitteraturen?

Is non-fiction also a part of children’s literature? In recent decades, children’s literature researchers have only considered fi ction children’s literature (Maria Nikolajeva 1998 and Torben Weinreich 2004), and certain younger researchers have shown a tendency to write about experimental books by prize-winning authors (Bodil Kampp 2002). Very few researchers have shown an interest in non-fi ction for children, and the consequence is that a great many publications for children have been overlooked. In the Nordic countries, Nina Goga’s doctoral thesis from 2008 is the only exception from this exclusive defi nition of children’s literature. In this article, I present a defi nition of children’s literature that includes non-fi ction. In this defi nition, literature means 'something written’ after 'litera’ (Latin: letter). The purposes of the article are, on the one hand, to discuss different defi nitions and characteristics of non-fi ction for children, and on the other hand to identify ways to analyze these books as literature for children. The article includes a discussion of a series of books about zoology by the Danish author Bent Jorgensen and the illustrator Birde Poulsen. One book in particular is discussed as an example of contemporary non-fiction and that is Om natten (In the Night, 2005). This book is subjected to analytical tools from literature studies, and one of the points is that non-fi ction should be interpreted and described through a textanalytical approach. Keywords: defi nitions of children’s literature, children’s literature research, non-fi ction for children, analysis of children’s literature. (Published: 3 March 2011) Citation: Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, Vol. 2 , 2011 DOI: 10.3402/ blft.v2i0.5836 Note: This article is being published simultaneously in Barnboken – tidskrift for barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research and Nordic ChildLit Aesthetics/Barnelitteraert forskningstidsskrift

Aboriginal Canada revisited

Preface and Acknowledgements -- Kerstin Knopf Introduction: Aboriginal Canada Revisited -- Kerstin Knopf I. HEALTH, SOCIAL ISSUES, POLITICS De-colonizing Canadian Aboriginal Health and Social Services from the Inside Out: A Case Study - The Ahousaht Holistic Society -- Marlene R. Atleo The Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada: A Case Study of Aboriginal Health -- Falko Brede The Nisga'a Common Bowl in Tradition and Politics -- Mansell Griffin and Antino Spanjer II. EDUCATION Metis Scholarship in the 21st Century: Life on the Periphery -- Tricia Logan Responding to the Needs of Post-secondary Aboriginal Education: The Development of the Indigenous Leadership and Community Development Program -- Barbara Walberg III. IMAGINING AND IMAGING THE 'INDIAN' The Imaginary Indian in German Children's Non-Fiction Literature -- Genevieve Susemihl The Art of Exclusion: The Status of Aboriginal Art in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection -- Siobhan N. Smith IV. LITERATURE 'Decolonizing the Mind': Drew Hayden Taylor's Play with the Semantics of Irony in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth -- Nancy Grimm Humorous Restorifications: Rewriting History with Healing Laughter -- Eva Gruber Modernizing the 'Indian': Literary Constructions of the Native in Selected Novels by Thomas King -- Thomas Rudell Reflections of Oral Traditions in Contemporary Native Writing: Ruby Slipperjack's Honour The Sun -- Katarzyna Juchnowicz V. PRINT MEDIA AND FILM Aboriginal Child Welfare: Symbolic Battleground in the News Media -- Robert Harding Tradition, Solidarity and Empowerment: An Analysis of Aboriginal News Representations in Canada -- Steffi Retzlaff 'Stolen Sisters': Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women as Represented in Canadian Films -- Kerstin Knopf List of Contributors Index

Exploring the Literature of Fact: Children's Nonfiction Trade Books in the Elementary Classroom

Exploring the Literature of Fact: Children's Nonfiction Trade Books in the Elementary Classroom

Books Received

Books Received Mark I. West Books Received Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales. Ed. Laura Gonzenbach. Trans. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 2003. In addition to writing scholarly books about children's literature, Jack Zipes has also translated into English numerous folk and fairy tales that originally appeared in German. Beautiful Angiola is his most recent project of this type. The tales included in this volume were collected by Laura Gonzenbach, a woman of Swiss-German descent who grew up in Sicily and who remained interested in Sicilian culture throughout her short life. She published these tales in German in the late nineteenth century, but they had never been translated into English until now. These lively tales often feature strong heroines and amusing asides about human nature. Books in Bloom: Creative Patterns and Props That Bring Stories to Life. By Kimberly K. Faurot. Chicago: American Library Association, 2003. This practical book is intended for preschool teachers, librarians, and anyone else who regularly presents picture books to children in a group setting. Kimberly K. Faurot provides step-by-step instructions on how to prepare props that can be used when presenting a number of popular picture books, including Leo Lionni's A Color of His Own, Helme Heine's The Most Wonderful Egg in the World, and Nancy Willard's The Nightgown of the Sullen Moon. The Child as Critic: Developing Literacy through Literature, K-8. 4th ed. By Glenna Sloan. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003. This latest edition of Glenna Sloan's popular textbook includes a new chapter in which Sloan discusses how contemporary literary theory relates to classroom practice. She has also expanded the chapter on poetry, added material about storytelling, and updated her lists of recommended children's books. A Children's Literature Tour of Great Britain. By Mark I. West. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003. This book provides detailed information on 49 places in Great Britain that are associated with children's literature and that are open to the public. The book also includes photographs. The foreword is by Peter Hunt. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Works for Children and Young Adults. Ed. Dianne Johnson. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 2003. This volume, which is the 11th in a multi-volume compilation of Langston Hughes' writings, reprints all of Hughes' poems, fiction, and nonfiction for children. The book also includes a scholarly introduction by Dianne Johnson in which she discusses Hughes' place in the history of African-American children's literature. Connecting Boys with Books: What Libraries Can Do. By Michael Sullivan. Chicago, American Library Association, 2003. An experienced librarian, Sullivan provides numerous suggestions that librarians (as well as teachers and parents) can use to encourage pre-adolescent boys to read. I especially like his comments about books that appeal to boys' sense of humor. Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the "20th Century Fantasy Literature: From Beatrix to Harry" International Literary Conference. Ed. Deborah Bice. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2003. This volume includes essays on numerous important fantasy books for children, including Lois Lowry's The Giver, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. How to Get Your Child to Love Reading: A Parents' Guide. By Esmé Raji Codell. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2003. This 500-page resource book provides parents with a vast amount of information that they can use to encourage their children to read. Codell includes annotated book lists, literature-related activities, information about recommended web sites, and practical advice about reading aloud to children. J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story behind Peter Pan. 2nd Ed. By Andrew Birkin. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003. The original edition of the biography of J. M. Barrie came out in 1979. In this edition, Andrew Birkin provides a new preface and adds more illustrations. The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. By Diane Ravitch. New York: Knopf, 2003. An historian of American education, Diane Ravitch turns her attention in this book to the underside of America's textbook publishing industry. She explains how various political pressure groups on both the political right and left have...

Children's Fiction 1900-1950. John Cooper , Jonathan CooperChildren's Nonfiction for Adult Information Needs: An Annotated Bibliography. Rosemarie Riechel

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsChildren's Fiction 1900-1950. John Cooper , Jonathan Cooper Children's Nonfiction for Adult Information Needs: An Annotated Bibliography. Rosemarie RiechelDee JonesDee Jones Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 69, Number 4Oct., 1999 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/603135 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1999 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Power of Work and Wages: Working Toward Historicity in Children's Fiction

The Power of Work and Wages:Working Toward Historicity in Children's Fiction Susan Campbell Bartoletti (bio) Someone in search of information about working children will find an abundance of books and articles on the subject of nineteenth-century child labor and the adults who fought for child labor reform. The general nature of the various texts is similar: they explain why the children worked; how their impoverished families needed the money to pay for food, rent, medical bills, and other necessities; and how greedy employers needed an abundant supply of cheap raw material. The texts tell what the adults did: how they organized labor strikes, formed unions, and struggled for social reform—for themselves and the children. Most agree that the history of child labor legislation is a history of progress and that future protection of children continues to be necessary—both in the United States and throughout the world. The familiar trope of the exploited and submerged child also dominates the literature published for children on the subject of child labor. For instance, Russell Freedman's award-winning Kids at Work (1994) highlights the crusade of Lewis Hine, a photographer hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in the early 1900s to photograph working children. Over a ten-year period, Hine photographed over 4500 images of working children—images that stood as graphic evidence that the child workers of the United States were being exploited, and that eventually, after thirty years, brought success to the NCLC in its struggle for child labor reform. Freedman's focus on the adult as agent and the child as object is typical; while his book is haunting and poignant, it takes a nostalgic approach to Hine's work and that of the NCLC, reinforcing a mythopoetic image of helpful adults and their effort to reform labor for children.1 Although it is true that working children were horribly exploited and victimized, and that a coalition of adults was necessary to bring about child labor reform and legislation, the agency, activism, and heroism of working children are equally facts of history. Just as adults did, children negotiated, protested, and rebelled against unfair working conditions and challenged dominant authority and institutions—but today's nonfiction for children seldom addresses that fact. During the past ten years, a number of children's books have been published on the subject of nineteenth-century child labor and the adults who fought for child labor reform. With the exception of Joan Dash's We Shall Not Be Moved (1996) and my own Growing Up in Coal Country (1996), most children's nonfiction on the subject of child labor overlooks or, at best, marginalizes the agency of children. Milton Meltzer's Bread and Roses (1994) relates how men, women, and children worked during the years 1865 to 1936. Although the book's subtitle claims that it depicts the "overall struggle of American labor," the text tells how the adults struggled for labor reform for themselves and for children, most notably during the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, strike when children were removed from their homes and sent to other cities. In another young adult book. Cheap Raw Material (1991), Meltzer traces the history of child labor from the beginnings of human history to the present. Again, the stories of the rebellion of spirited and courageous children are left out. In other nonfiction, Penny Colman's Mother Jones: March of the Mill Children (1994), Betsy Harvey Kraft's Mother Jones (1995), and Stephen Currie's We Have Marched Together: The Working Children's Crusade (1996) all relate "Mother" Mary Harris Jones's organization of the mill and factory children's strike and her efforts for child labor reform. As its title suggests, Currie's book, at least, is not simply the biography of Jones as a champion of the rights of (passive) children, but rather, an examination of the strike as adult/child collaboration. But on the other hand, the children's words have been used in a way that manipulates or omits sections that show the children indeed empowered themselves and challenged their parents, employers, and bosses. Even Currie, then, who ostensibly sees these working children as active agents, furthers...

Sour Science

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoan WhetzelJOAN WHETZEL is a freelance writer who specializes in children's nonfiction, particularly science-related stories. Her article “Forbidden Gardens: Opening the Garden Gate” won 4th place in the October 1998 Writers Digest Contest. As a school volunteer, she has frequently assisted teachers with classroom activities such as Sour Science. She has been a mentor and tutor for several years, helping students with their reading and writing skills.

An Evolving Past: The Story of Historical Fiction and Nonfiction for Children

An Evolving Past: The Story of Historical Fiction and Nonfiction for Children

Children's Nonfiction Multicultural Literature

Children's Nonfiction Multicultural Literature

Non-Fiction for Children: Does It Really Exist?

Non-Fiction for Children: Does It Really Exist?

Non-Fiction for Children: Does It Really Exist?

Can any literature written specifically for children possibly be non-fictional? This old essay explore why it might be and why it might not be.

In Days of Old: The Middle Ages in Children's Non-Fiction

In Days of Old: The Middle Ages in Children's Non-Fiction