CCBC-Net Archives
[CCBC-Net] Nonfiction
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Rita Auerbach <rauer>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 00:53:17 -0400
A few observations. Some people have suggested that fictionalized nonfiction can be handled by declaring it fiction and placing it in the fiction section of libraries. I would maintain, however, that this doesn't work with biographies of famous people. When readers finish a book about a well-known person which looks like a biography and reads like a biography, they are likely to remember details from the book as though they were true. We've seen some beautiful and engaging picture book biographies in recent years which are, in my opinion, marred by the unnecessary addition of episodes invented whole by the author. A current example is a striking book about Shoeless Joe Jackson. Apparently his bat weighted 48 ounces (or bore some relation to the number 48). The author suggests in the main text that Jackson asked for this weight because of the 48 states then in the Union. Only in the afterward does he reveal that this reason was an authorial invention. But this is precisely the kind of detail that sticks in the mind. Labeled fiction or nonfiction, the book leaves the reader with a lasting misimpression. I don't understand why so many of these beautiful picture books must include fictionalized details when the subjects' lives are already sufficiently fascinating.
Nor do I think children need books which deliberately ignore the foibles of great people, no matter how engaging the texts. Why could more nuanced portraits not be equally engaging? As someone who was a young adult in the 60's, I've always thought that one reason for the disillusionment of my generation was that we were raised in the 50's with the notion that the United States and its founders always stood for liberty and justice. The discovery that this was far from the truth was much more disheartening than it might have been if our schooling had offered a more accurate portrayal of our history.
On another strand, Doris Orgel wrote: "I hope it?s not too late to raise a question related to the topic of non-fiction: What about mythology?...[M]ythology is classified as non-fiction; and non-fiction, everyone agrees, is factual -- all of which would lead to the notion, decidedly non?ctual, that Hera, Zeus, etc. really lived...." The confusion here stems from the fact that *nonfiction* has more than one meaning. Most commonly, we use it to suggest factual books of the kind we've been discussing. In libraries, however, nonfiction is everything not in the fiction section, including poetry, jokes and riddles, folklore and mythology. In this context, labeling a book nonfiction does not necessarily imply that it is factual.
As to what *factual* means, that is a more difficult discussion....
Rita Auerbach, Librarian, Manorhaven School, Port Washington, NY
Received on Wed 10 Apr 2002 11:53:17 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 00:53:17 -0400
A few observations. Some people have suggested that fictionalized nonfiction can be handled by declaring it fiction and placing it in the fiction section of libraries. I would maintain, however, that this doesn't work with biographies of famous people. When readers finish a book about a well-known person which looks like a biography and reads like a biography, they are likely to remember details from the book as though they were true. We've seen some beautiful and engaging picture book biographies in recent years which are, in my opinion, marred by the unnecessary addition of episodes invented whole by the author. A current example is a striking book about Shoeless Joe Jackson. Apparently his bat weighted 48 ounces (or bore some relation to the number 48). The author suggests in the main text that Jackson asked for this weight because of the 48 states then in the Union. Only in the afterward does he reveal that this reason was an authorial invention. But this is precisely the kind of detail that sticks in the mind. Labeled fiction or nonfiction, the book leaves the reader with a lasting misimpression. I don't understand why so many of these beautiful picture books must include fictionalized details when the subjects' lives are already sufficiently fascinating.
Nor do I think children need books which deliberately ignore the foibles of great people, no matter how engaging the texts. Why could more nuanced portraits not be equally engaging? As someone who was a young adult in the 60's, I've always thought that one reason for the disillusionment of my generation was that we were raised in the 50's with the notion that the United States and its founders always stood for liberty and justice. The discovery that this was far from the truth was much more disheartening than it might have been if our schooling had offered a more accurate portrayal of our history.
On another strand, Doris Orgel wrote: "I hope it?s not too late to raise a question related to the topic of non-fiction: What about mythology?...[M]ythology is classified as non-fiction; and non-fiction, everyone agrees, is factual -- all of which would lead to the notion, decidedly non?ctual, that Hera, Zeus, etc. really lived...." The confusion here stems from the fact that *nonfiction* has more than one meaning. Most commonly, we use it to suggest factual books of the kind we've been discussing. In libraries, however, nonfiction is everything not in the fiction section, including poetry, jokes and riddles, folklore and mythology. In this context, labeling a book nonfiction does not necessarily imply that it is factual.
As to what *factual* means, that is a more difficult discussion....
Rita Auerbach, Librarian, Manorhaven School, Port Washington, NY
Received on Wed 10 Apr 2002 11:53:17 PM CDT
