Ellen's adolescent literature class has introduced me to an amazing world of nonfiction literature for youth that I had no idea existed. I had seen nonfiction books written for youth in the library, of course, when helping children with research projects. But they were pretty nondescript: nice summaries of events or people written to reach a youth audience.
The books Ellen is reading are different. They are like the best nonfiction for adults in the sense that the high-quality writing is part of the accomplishment. But they actually exceed adult nonfiction in bringing their subject alive because they employ graphical material in such a superior way. By graphical material I mean photos, illustrations, maps, and layout design. The two most amazing I've seen so far are "Black Potatoes" about the Irish potato famine and "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" about Shackleton's exploration of Antarctica. Even less conventional is Maus, a graphic book (it's nonfiction in the sense that's it's essentially an oral history) of the Holocaust. All three books have blown me away with their writing and use of graphics.
The thing I worry about is why Language Arts teachers in high schools are responsible for teaching nonfiction writing and historical analysis under the new core standards that Utah and others are adopting. I'm not sure English teachers are well-equipped to help students understand these kinds of texts. I would hope that History teachers would start adopting texts like these or that English teachers would collaborate with History teachers in using these texts.
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