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Fwd: Story Narrative Nonfiction
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From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 13:38:23 -0600
Betty Carter asked me to forward this message:
I am following this thread about what I call story narrative nonfiction and the Sibert with great interest. Let me begin by saying that I have no quarrel with the winners. I was a member of the Boston Globe/Horn Book committee which also recognized Sir Walter Ralegh and, along with the Horn Book editorial staff, believed strongly that Blizzard! should be starred, which it was in the Jan/Feb issue.
But that said, I think there is an interesting point raised within this CCBC-Net community about the merits of structure in nonfiction. I think that there's no doubt, from looking at a myriad of reading interest studies, that many of us (I'm thinking women here and being very general) prefer story narrative to other kinds of writing. We like fiction and we like our nonfiction to resemble that form as much as possible. We're comfortable with it and comfortable with ways in which to evaluate the book or story as a whole. It's easier to read for us because it's what we know. And we've made it easier for kids because it's what we recommend. I look at books studied in classrooms, at books read aloud in schools and libraries, and I frequently see a real emphasis on fiction although not as strongly in public library settings in this part of the country as in school library settings for the read-aloud part). But, some interesting research from Christine Pappas (among others) shows that young children don't find story formats any easier to read than other forms of exposition. I think story becomes easier because it's what we give them.
But, here, I think we're making a big mistake. Children can only become facile readers through great exposure to and recognition of a variety of expository formats. Some kids (and I wonder about those we often describe as reluctant readers here) prefer other forms of narrative but tell me books on collecting baseball cards or drawing or world records aren't considered real reading. I think of Jean Fritz who writes (and I'm paraphrasing here so I hope I'm not getting the next three quotations wrong) that the art of fiction is making up facts to fit the story and the art of nonfiction is making up the story to fit the facts. That story can come through a variety of structures -- chronological order, enumeration, cause/effect, question/answer, and the like -- and, as Brent Ashbranner once wrote: finding an appropriate structure is the most difficult job a nonfiction writer has. I recently interviewed Milton Meltzer (who uses a variety of structures for imparting information from story narrative to enumeration) for a Booklist interview and he said: I've often started with one structure and found that it just wasn't right for the theme and I've had to abandon that and go to another.
The writing of these kinds of books can be as dramatic as that of story narrative. Yes, encyclopedia entries aren't typically eautifully composed pieces, but there's a lot of middle ground between an encyclopedia entry and the kinds of nonfiction we praise as adults: that from Thomas Paine, Loren Eisley, Martin Luther King, or Lewis Thomas.
And children can be just as enraptured with non-story narrative as with story when listening to read alouds. Some years ago, one of the students at Texas Woman's University, Sue Griffiths who is now a middle school librarian in Fort Worth, Texas, did her master's thesis on just this topic. She took books from Young Adult Choices and read aloud the nonfiction to her 9th grade very remedial students. Many of these books were ones that I suspect none of us would choose to read aloud (there was one, I recall, on different kinds of airplanes with much discussion about the differences in parts and wing spans and the like). But, as she reported, the kids loved the change of pace. Their responses to the literature were moving and went way beyond content to themes and issues. In the years since, I had the pleasure of seeing other students do similar studies with younger kids, with able readers, and with less able readers and they all found that many kids responded so positively to the selections that they continued to include non-story nonfiction in recommendations to teachers for class study and for their own read aloud.
What I think is important to remember here is that organizational patterns other than story narrative represent important ways of thinking. Strong nonficiton can provide such models, but it can also introduce youngsters to the language of grown-ups, which is often not story but enumeration or cause and effect, for example. These patterns are not easier than story narrative nor are they inherently less "literary." And, in this era of high-stakes testing (with which those of us in Texas are more than familiar), kids are scoring poorly on selections of non-story narrative. We can't expect them to raise those scores by giving them more selections that are stories (or by asking them to respond in "story" ways). And we can't expect them to raise those scores through dull listings of facts. But we can through the wealth of fine nonfiction available that presents information in a variety of ways.
Betty Carter
Received on Tue 06 Mar 2001 01:38:23 PM CST
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 13:38:23 -0600
Betty Carter asked me to forward this message:
I am following this thread about what I call story narrative nonfiction and the Sibert with great interest. Let me begin by saying that I have no quarrel with the winners. I was a member of the Boston Globe/Horn Book committee which also recognized Sir Walter Ralegh and, along with the Horn Book editorial staff, believed strongly that Blizzard! should be starred, which it was in the Jan/Feb issue.
But that said, I think there is an interesting point raised within this CCBC-Net community about the merits of structure in nonfiction. I think that there's no doubt, from looking at a myriad of reading interest studies, that many of us (I'm thinking women here and being very general) prefer story narrative to other kinds of writing. We like fiction and we like our nonfiction to resemble that form as much as possible. We're comfortable with it and comfortable with ways in which to evaluate the book or story as a whole. It's easier to read for us because it's what we know. And we've made it easier for kids because it's what we recommend. I look at books studied in classrooms, at books read aloud in schools and libraries, and I frequently see a real emphasis on fiction although not as strongly in public library settings in this part of the country as in school library settings for the read-aloud part). But, some interesting research from Christine Pappas (among others) shows that young children don't find story formats any easier to read than other forms of exposition. I think story becomes easier because it's what we give them.
But, here, I think we're making a big mistake. Children can only become facile readers through great exposure to and recognition of a variety of expository formats. Some kids (and I wonder about those we often describe as reluctant readers here) prefer other forms of narrative but tell me books on collecting baseball cards or drawing or world records aren't considered real reading. I think of Jean Fritz who writes (and I'm paraphrasing here so I hope I'm not getting the next three quotations wrong) that the art of fiction is making up facts to fit the story and the art of nonfiction is making up the story to fit the facts. That story can come through a variety of structures -- chronological order, enumeration, cause/effect, question/answer, and the like -- and, as Brent Ashbranner once wrote: finding an appropriate structure is the most difficult job a nonfiction writer has. I recently interviewed Milton Meltzer (who uses a variety of structures for imparting information from story narrative to enumeration) for a Booklist interview and he said: I've often started with one structure and found that it just wasn't right for the theme and I've had to abandon that and go to another.
The writing of these kinds of books can be as dramatic as that of story narrative. Yes, encyclopedia entries aren't typically eautifully composed pieces, but there's a lot of middle ground between an encyclopedia entry and the kinds of nonfiction we praise as adults: that from Thomas Paine, Loren Eisley, Martin Luther King, or Lewis Thomas.
And children can be just as enraptured with non-story narrative as with story when listening to read alouds. Some years ago, one of the students at Texas Woman's University, Sue Griffiths who is now a middle school librarian in Fort Worth, Texas, did her master's thesis on just this topic. She took books from Young Adult Choices and read aloud the nonfiction to her 9th grade very remedial students. Many of these books were ones that I suspect none of us would choose to read aloud (there was one, I recall, on different kinds of airplanes with much discussion about the differences in parts and wing spans and the like). But, as she reported, the kids loved the change of pace. Their responses to the literature were moving and went way beyond content to themes and issues. In the years since, I had the pleasure of seeing other students do similar studies with younger kids, with able readers, and with less able readers and they all found that many kids responded so positively to the selections that they continued to include non-story nonfiction in recommendations to teachers for class study and for their own read aloud.
What I think is important to remember here is that organizational patterns other than story narrative represent important ways of thinking. Strong nonficiton can provide such models, but it can also introduce youngsters to the language of grown-ups, which is often not story but enumeration or cause and effect, for example. These patterns are not easier than story narrative nor are they inherently less "literary." And, in this era of high-stakes testing (with which those of us in Texas are more than familiar), kids are scoring poorly on selections of non-story narrative. We can't expect them to raise those scores by giving them more selections that are stories (or by asking them to respond in "story" ways). And we can't expect them to raise those scores through dull listings of facts. But we can through the wealth of fine nonfiction available that presents information in a variety of ways.
Betty Carter
Received on Tue 06 Mar 2001 01:38:23 PM CST
