From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2010 08:58:20 -0400 (EDT)

The recent posts on the need for care and caution in dealing with primary s ource documents are a fitting frame for this whole discussion. Nonfiction i s alive -- it is us as living, breathing, detectives using our best insight , training, and knowledge to tease out truths from fragments handed down to us or observed in the world around us. The past is as alive as we are, bec ause we are always seeing it differently, finding new angles of vision, dis covering new connections. It is that sense of life, of fresh inquiry, that we need to bring to young people in our books -- so that they see what we h ave missed, so that they can make new discoveries. Our books give them tool s to use and permission to search -- that is, as in so many fantasy novels, the gift elders offer to the heroes as they set off on their quests. And i t is that sense of both vitality and generosity in nonfiction that has come across so wonderfully in this discussion.

Marc Aronson
Received on Sat 23 Oct 2010 08:58:20 AM CDT