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From: Edie_Ching at cathedral.org <Edie_Ching>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 11:17:30 -0500
I have to reply to Jonathan's remark that he has never read a nonfiction that has come close to fiction. Might I recommend Armstrong's Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World? She BEGINS by telling you the end, everyone survived, a real no-no in fiction, and yet you cannot put it down. You must know how they survived and how they got into trouble in the first place. I used it for my parent-son book discussion group and every reader, adult and student, loved it and thought it was one of the best books they had ever read. This book has turned our entire lower school into a bunch of Ernest Shacleton fans, how's that for a life-changing experience. Edie Ching, St. Albans School
Message----From: Jonathan Hunt [mailto:jhunt24 at hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 1:39 AM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: [CCBC-Net] scattered thoughts
I, too, am really enjoying this discussion. Already I find this award more
interesting than the Caldecott (which always seems like a crapshoot to me).
I've only read BLIZZARD! and have just begun SIR WALTER RALEGH, both of which I really like. And if the other Sibert books are as good as these and
the small handful of nonfiction books I did read from last year--HURRY FREEDOM, THE AMAZING LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, FORGING FREEDOM, GIVE ME LIBERTY!, and MALCOLM X: A FIRE BURNING BRIGHTLY--then I am in for a real treat.
A couple thoughts about PEDRO AND ME. First, I found Perry Nodelman's review in the Riverbank Review articulate, well reasoned, and interesting(and tended to agree with it, in spite of not having read the book). Any thoughts on it? And second, perhaps we will look back on this as a revolutionary selection, not because of its graphic novel format, but because it is a paperback edition. If we start handing out prestigious literary awards to paperbacks . . .
I'm drawn to an observation Marc Aronson made in his Boston Globe-Horn Book speech about our tendency to omit nonfiction on lists of favorite, life-changing books. After giving it much thought, and with apologies to Marc, I have to conclude that none of the nonfiction books in my life really
even come close to my top fiction, with the sole exception of the World Book
Encyclopedias (which were conveniently located very close to the bathroom and were thus read religiously). I did read them frequently for pleasure, and I learned a lot from them, so, in that regard, they were definitely life-changing.
I find that most of my fifth graders prefer this kind of browser-friendly nonfiction (Stephen Biesty, David Macaulay, Terry Deary, Klutz Press, Guiness Book of World Records, how-to books e.g. THE BUCK BOOK) for pleasure
reading as opposed to expository text for which they unfortunately seem to need a lot of hand-holding, as Kathy Isaacs commented.
This led to my thinking about what Betty Carter called non-story narrative, and the future of the Sibert, especially because, when the Newbery and the National Book Awards do recognize nonfiction, it is exclusively memoir or some type of expository text with a story narrative.
On a different note, does anyone else think the scrupulous documentation of sources in nonfiction has had an effect on fiction, especially historical fiction. A couple years ago all the Newbery books had author notes--BUD, NOT BUDDY, GETTING NEAR TO BABY, OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA, and 26 FAIRMOUNT AVENUE. What do people think of author notes that divulge the inspiration for their stories? Personally, I'd rather not know that parts of BUD, BABY,
DAVE, and AMELIA were based on family members. Leave that to my imagination, please. I also think of Gary Paulsen whose work so often inhabits the borderlands between fiction and nonfiction, and especially the author note in THE BEET FIELDS and the yalsa-bk discussion on whether it was
fiction or biography. And I don't think this recent tendency is necessarily
limited to historical fiction and semi-autobiography either, especially when
I think of author notes in the galleys of MONSTER and GATHERING BLUE that were judiciously left out. Anyway, I have rambled on too long, and wandered
away from the topic too much . . . so enough.
Jonathan
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Received on Wed 07 Mar 2001 10:17:30 AM CST
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 11:17:30 -0500
I have to reply to Jonathan's remark that he has never read a nonfiction that has come close to fiction. Might I recommend Armstrong's Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World? She BEGINS by telling you the end, everyone survived, a real no-no in fiction, and yet you cannot put it down. You must know how they survived and how they got into trouble in the first place. I used it for my parent-son book discussion group and every reader, adult and student, loved it and thought it was one of the best books they had ever read. This book has turned our entire lower school into a bunch of Ernest Shacleton fans, how's that for a life-changing experience. Edie Ching, St. Albans School
Message----From: Jonathan Hunt [mailto:jhunt24 at hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 1:39 AM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: [CCBC-Net] scattered thoughts
I, too, am really enjoying this discussion. Already I find this award more
interesting than the Caldecott (which always seems like a crapshoot to me).
I've only read BLIZZARD! and have just begun SIR WALTER RALEGH, both of which I really like. And if the other Sibert books are as good as these and
the small handful of nonfiction books I did read from last year--HURRY FREEDOM, THE AMAZING LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, FORGING FREEDOM, GIVE ME LIBERTY!, and MALCOLM X: A FIRE BURNING BRIGHTLY--then I am in for a real treat.
A couple thoughts about PEDRO AND ME. First, I found Perry Nodelman's review in the Riverbank Review articulate, well reasoned, and interesting(and tended to agree with it, in spite of not having read the book). Any thoughts on it? And second, perhaps we will look back on this as a revolutionary selection, not because of its graphic novel format, but because it is a paperback edition. If we start handing out prestigious literary awards to paperbacks . . .
I'm drawn to an observation Marc Aronson made in his Boston Globe-Horn Book speech about our tendency to omit nonfiction on lists of favorite, life-changing books. After giving it much thought, and with apologies to Marc, I have to conclude that none of the nonfiction books in my life really
even come close to my top fiction, with the sole exception of the World Book
Encyclopedias (which were conveniently located very close to the bathroom and were thus read religiously). I did read them frequently for pleasure, and I learned a lot from them, so, in that regard, they were definitely life-changing.
I find that most of my fifth graders prefer this kind of browser-friendly nonfiction (Stephen Biesty, David Macaulay, Terry Deary, Klutz Press, Guiness Book of World Records, how-to books e.g. THE BUCK BOOK) for pleasure
reading as opposed to expository text for which they unfortunately seem to need a lot of hand-holding, as Kathy Isaacs commented.
This led to my thinking about what Betty Carter called non-story narrative, and the future of the Sibert, especially because, when the Newbery and the National Book Awards do recognize nonfiction, it is exclusively memoir or some type of expository text with a story narrative.
On a different note, does anyone else think the scrupulous documentation of sources in nonfiction has had an effect on fiction, especially historical fiction. A couple years ago all the Newbery books had author notes--BUD, NOT BUDDY, GETTING NEAR TO BABY, OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA, and 26 FAIRMOUNT AVENUE. What do people think of author notes that divulge the inspiration for their stories? Personally, I'd rather not know that parts of BUD, BABY,
DAVE, and AMELIA were based on family members. Leave that to my imagination, please. I also think of Gary Paulsen whose work so often inhabits the borderlands between fiction and nonfiction, and especially the author note in THE BEET FIELDS and the yalsa-bk discussion on whether it was
fiction or biography. And I don't think this recent tendency is necessarily
limited to historical fiction and semi-autobiography either, especially when
I think of author notes in the galleys of MONSTER and GATHERING BLUE that were judiciously left out. Anyway, I have rambled on too long, and wandered
away from the topic too much . . . so enough.
Jonathan
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
~ ~ ~ To send a reply to the entire CCBC-Net community,click on...
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mailto:ccbc-net-unsub at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Received on Wed 07 Mar 2001 10:17:30 AM CST
