CHILDREN'S LITERATURE ASSEMBLY
  • Home
  • Join/Donate
  • Members Only
  • Journal
  • Notables
  • Grants & Awards
  • Resources
  • CLA @ NCTE
  • Conference
  • About
  • CLA Blog

The CLA Blog

Making Waves and Radiating Hope: Young Peoples’ Acts of Resistance in 2024 Award-Winners

1/27/2024

 

By Jennifer Slagus and Callie Hammond

There is something endlessly energizing about reading new things—whether it’s an anxiously-awaited release, a long-term tenant on your TBR-list, or the research of an emerging scholar (maybe we’re a little biased on that last one). Members of the CLA Student Committee are privileged to do just that: to read exciting books and write about all the exciting ways they can be used in classrooms to improve the lives and learning of our students. Much of our work as early career researchers highlights critical pieces of children’s literature that attend to the social, cultural, and political contexts of our real and literary worlds. We want to share a few recently published, award-winning books relevant to our doctoral research that highlight young peoples’ bravery and acts of resistance. All three are critical, impactful reads worth embedding in each of our classrooms in 2024.

Jennifer Slagus

I’m a huge fan of books by authors who share a lived reality with their characters. As a neurodivergent researcher, I strive to highlight middle grade novels that help to restory the perceptions of who neurodivergent people are (and who they’re allowed to be). There have been many fabulous authors in the past five years or so who have contributed books that do just that. But one author sticks out to me as an exceptional advocate for neurodivergent acceptance: Sally J. Pla. She’s an autistic middle grade author and the founder of A Novel Mind, a website that centers mental health and neurodiversity representation in children’s fiction. ANM has been a gold mine for my research. Not only does it feature a vibrant blog and a ton of educator resources, but it also has a database of over 1,150 children’s books featuring mental health and neurodiversity representation.
Cver of The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGuinn (2023)
Picture
Sally’s most recent novel, The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGuinn (2023) was just awarded the 2024 Schneider Family Book Award for its fantastic neurodivergent representation set against the realistic difficulties many disabled people face (like infantilization, abuse, and resulting trauma). Despite all of Maudie’s hardships—living with an abusive stepdad and narrowly escaping a ravaging California wildfire—she finds strength in her own voice and is able to admit she needs help. Just before the book published, Sally and I talked about Maudie on Episode 4 of my podcast In the MIDst: A Kid's Lit Podcast.  She explained the novel is “about blooming after your world’s kind of been scorched in a way. But it’s a healing novel, it talks about some really deep issues of emotional abuse . . . and moving on afterwards and healing and growing and finding your voice and learning that you can tell, and you can talk, and it’s okay” (31:25-31:46).

Maudie’s ability to find her voice and self-advocate—her acts of resistance against the way she is continually mistreated—make this a critical read. And the accompanying discussion guide, created by an Education PhD, features questions and activities to facilitate classroom discussions that can help young readers better understand Maudie’s experiences, and support them as they analyze the conflict, and consider how to better empathize with and care for their neurodivergent friends, family, and community members.

Callie Hammond

As a middle school teacher for ten years, I often utilized picturebooks to engage my students and to teach discrete skills, usually about grammar, and to illustrate writing techniques. These lessons had varying success—sometimes the 7th graders would be open to reading a picturebook, other times they rolled their eyes and refused to participate.

The most successful picturebooks that I ever brought into my classroom though had nothing to do with grammar or writing, they had to do with Anne Frank. I taught her diary to 6th graders who, unless they were readers themselves and had already discovered World War II fiction, had no knowledge of the Holocaust or how Jews were treated in the years preceding the war. My Anne Frank picturebook collection featured many books about Anne (there are a lot of them out there), but also books that explained significant parts of the war: the night of broken glass, Jewish resistance, children in concentration camps, children who also hid during the war, and many others.

Now, as a doctoral student in English education, I have come full circle to analyze the stories of Jewish female protagonists in YA novels about World War II, and representations of the Holocaust in picturebooks. Two of these picturebooks were published in 2023 and feature stories and information that our students need and can learn from. Both books were also just named Notable Books for a Global Society Award for 2024. As is fitting for a book about a traumatic historical event, both are nonfiction and have extensive back matter to explain the stories.
Cover of Hidden Hope: How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust
In Hidden Hope: How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust, a young girl named Jacqueline resists the Nazis by hiding fake papers in a wooden yellow duck toy for those who needed to escape France after the Nazi invasion. Her story reveals a twist though: she is a Jewish girl masquerading in the open as a Christian. Her act of resistance and sheer bravery are an incredible learning opportunity for students to understand different types of resistance during the war.

Cover of Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kinderstransport
Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kinderstransport is about the Kindertransport (or child transportation) of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Great Britain. This picturebook does not shy away from the overwhelming confusion and sadness of the children who are leaving their parents, and of the parents whose children are leaving. Reading this book with middle school and high school students will provide an emotional connection to the hardships of the war without focusing on atrocity pictures.


Utilizing both of these picturebooks in the classroom with older students can prep them for the heavier history or readings a teacher might soon introduce. They also provide picture evidence of hardships and bravery without being too macabre.
Jennifer Slagus is a doctoral candidate at Brock University in Ontario, Canada and Coordinator of Research & Instruction at the University of South Florida Libraries. Jennifer’s doctoral research focuses on representations of neurodivergence in twenty-first century middle grade fiction.

Callie Hammond is a doctoral student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Callie’s doctoral research focuses on accessing historical knowledge when teaching literature that involves the Holocaust and using critical content analysis to analyze and understand representations of the Holocaust in children’s picturebooks.

CLA Student Committee Members
  • Jennifer Slagus - Brock University (Chair)
  • Nadine Bravo - University of Southern Maine
  • Kristen Foos - Ohio State University
  • Callie Hammond - NC State University
  • Ling Hao - University of South Carolina
  • Carrie Ann Thomas - Ohio State University

Looking Back with Biographies

12/18/2023

 

By The Biography Clearinghouse 

As we come to the end of another calendar year, we reflect upon how much the world can change in just a few short months. Political turmoil, violence, and war threaten the lives of millions. Climate scientists tell us that 2023 was the hottest year on record. Devastating fires and floods ravaged cities, towns, and forests alike. These catastrophes may feel unique to our life experience, so it helps to remember that people before us have faced hardships too.

Again, we turn to biographies to learn from the people among us and those who came before us. What lessons in leadership can we find? How do artists, faith leaders, scientists, activists, educators, and others work towards goals? Handle setbacks? Cope with prejudice? Persevere while facing devastation? Work collaboratively to create change? 

In this year-end blog entry, we share a few picture book biographies from 2022 and 2023 that were inspiring to us, as well as preview a 2024 biography. 

With best wishes for peace in the New Year,

The Biography Clearinghouse Team 


A Song for The Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington
by Carole Boston Weatherford & Rob Sanders, illustrations by Bryan McCray (November 2022, Henry Holt and Co.)

It takes a person with extraordinary skills to organize an event as tremendous as the 1963 March on Washington. Bayard Rustin was primed for this event from a young age and across the span of his life. In A Song for the Unsung, we learn that his grandmother instilled in him Quaker values, and the importance of civic engagement; that Rustin practiced civil disobedience by resisting racism; that he endured homophobia even among the civil rights activists beside whom he struggled; and that along with being dedicated to non-violent resistance, he was a talented singer who knew the power of music to move and inspire. The creators of this biography pay tribute to Bayard Rustin with reverential grace and beauty, rendering him simultaneously sturdy and vulnerable, amid gorgeous mixed media illustrations. In the classroom, A Song for the Unsung can inspire conversation about the qualities of leaders such as Rustin, the legacy of the march (documented in the backmatter), and protest music (while listening to the songs listed on each page). 

A song for the unsung cover

Game of Freedom Cover

Game of Freedom: Mestre Bimba and the Art of Capoeira
by Duncan Tonatiuh (October 2023, Abrams) 

In Game of Freedom, Duncan Tonatiuh tells the story of Manuel Dos Reis Machado, or Mestre Bimba as he is best known, and his role in uplifting capoeira from a marginalized and persecuted practice to an internationally recognized artform. The book starts at the turn of the 20th century in Brazil’s state of Bahia during Bimba’s childhood, when it was illegal to play capoeira in public. Skillfully interweaving exposition within the book’s narrative arc, Tonatiuh describes capoeira as a form of artistic cultural expression combining “music, fighting, theatrics, and dance” with deep roots within the culture of the Black descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, and explicitly links the harassment of capoeiristas to racial prejudice. After learning to play capoeira as a teenager, Bimba began to teach others but bristled at the disrespect and continuing persecution of the practice. In what follows, Tonatiuh offers an informative unspooling of how social and political change are slowly built. Readers learn that, determined to change matters, Bimba developed a new capoeira style and established a school or academia for teaching it and participated in a series of challenge bouts that increased the game’s visibility. Bimba’s efforts, in combination with the opening of other academies and the development of other capoeira styles, helped shift the public’s perception of the game and led to its complete decriminalization in 1953. The book’s backmatter includes a glossary and a rich author’s note.
 
Utilizing his distinctive stylized illustration style, that is influenced by pre-Columbian art, Tonatiuh captures the beauty and the fluidity of capoeira and of the Brazilian historical contexts of Mestre Bimba’s life. Particularly poignant is the depiction of enslaved ancestors as reversed silhouettes in select illustrations of capoeiristas. Readers may notice some slight departures from Tonatiuh’s typical rendering in the shape of the characters’ ears, but most notably in the en face depiction of some of the capoeira players. 

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller
by Breana McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison (January 2024, Dial/Penguin)

Throughout 2023, school and public librarians have served as guardians of free speech, putting their careers on the line to support young people’s access to diverse books. These librarians, to whom we owe so much, are part of a long line of librarian activists creating change for their communities and beyond. Augusta Baker was one such leader. Baker curated a list of Black book creators for the young people with whom she worked at the 135th Street Branch Library in Harlem, fostered the careers of many Black authors, from Virginia Hamilton to Walter Dean Meyers, and became the first Black coordinator of children’s services within the New York City Library System. Baker was also an author and storyteller in her own right, teaching storytelling at Columbia University and becoming “Storyteller in Residence” at the University of South Carolina. McDaniels’ writing moves, propelling readers forward through varied sentences, alliteration, and just enough information. Hamilton’s gorgeous mixed media collages, saturated in warm colors of yellow, orange, and green, envelop readers in the warmth of Baker’s presence in the library and in the classroom. Backmatter includes a timeline, author’s note, and citations list. Go Forth and Tell would be a wonderful read alongside picture book biographies of fellow New York City librarian, storyteller, and changemaker Pura Belpré such as Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré (Denise, 2019) and Pura’s Cuentos: How Pura Belpré Reshaped Libraries with her Stories (Pimentel 2021), and Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library (Weatherford, 2017).   

Go forth and tell cover

Hope is an arrow cover

Hope is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese American Poet Kahlil Gibran
by Cory McCarthy, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (July 2022, Candlewick)

Khalil Gibran believed and held on to the universals of love and togetherness as he navigated his life as an outsider traversing between cultures.  He moved back and forth between his homeland of Lebanon, and Boston, in the United States.  The seeds for his greatest work of writing, The Prophet, were sewn in his continuous back and forth between cultures.  Actual pieces from this famous book, which has been translated into more than 40 languages, are woven into this story.  The snippets offer readers a glimpse of how his life may have engendered and connected to his famous writings.  It was his art and poetry which helped Khalil Gibran persevere through incredible challenges and helped him communicate his ideas across cultures.  There is a good chance that students who have grown up with more than one culture will connect with his story.  It may provide teachers an opportunity to introduce students to some of Khalil Gibran’s work and dig in more and could invite students to communicate some of the larger feelings and ideas in their lives through poetry and art, much like he did.

Tiny Jumper: How Tiny Broadwick Created the Parachute Rip Cord
by Candy Dahl, illustrated by Maithili Joshi (October 2023, Little Bee Books)

Born as a “tiny” baby, but with tremendous courage, Tiny Broadwick was the inventor of the parachute rip cord and named the “First Lady of Parachuting.” Despite enduring embarrassing stunts like dressing up as a baby in order to do what she loved, Tiny knew she belonged in the air and took action to make her dreams a reality. After establishing herself as a prolific hot air jumper, Tiny persevered and entered a world where no woman had gone before- parachuting from airplanes. In Tiny Jumper, Dahl and Joshi show what determination, bravery, and unique interests can accomplish. Joshi’s dynamic illustrations and the incorporation of quotes from Tiny Broadwick throughout the running text bring this incredible woman’s story to life. Tiny Jumper inspires readers to follow their passions, against all odds, even when they seem up in the clouds.
Tiny Jumper Cover

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrap the World Cover

Christo and Jean Claude Wrap the World
by G. Neri, illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle (March 2023, Candlewick)

One of the greatest gifts artists offer humanity is the invitation to see the world in new ways. This is certainly the case with environmental artists Christo and Jean-Claude, the subjects of a new picture book written by G. Neri and illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle. Imagine walking through a city and suddenly noticing a car or even a giant building completely wrapped in fabric or finding a brightly colored floating path from a lakeshore to an island, where none had been the day before. These projects and more are featured by Neri who employs a constructed dialogue between the two artists to convey their life stories, their unique installations, and the goals that guided their public art making.  Haidle’s mixed media illustrations match the playful creative nature of the artists’ collaboration, incorporating frames, speech bubbles, and marvelous renderings of the oversize and surprising works of art. Helpful back matter includes additional details about the married couple’s life stories, a note about the author’s sources and how the dialogue was composed, and ‘fun facts’ about the art. This engaging biography compels consideration of important questions such as: What is art? Who owns art? Who experiences art? Can art be temporary? How does art impact our lives?
Biobraphy Clearinhouse Logo
The Biography Clearinghouse is a website aiming "to support educators in sharing biographies with young people." The site includes several resources, including a framework for teaching with biographies, interviews with biography authors and illustrators, and a portfolio of book entries. Recent entries:
  • Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin
  • A Life of Service: The Story of Tammy Duckworth by Christina Soontornvat,
    Illustrated by Dow Phumiruk

The Biography Clearinghouse Team is comprised of book creators and educators of different levels.

Winter Hiatus Announcement

Picture

Interrogating History, Perspective, and Nonfiction Writing with Steve Sheinkin’s "Impossible Escape"

10/10/2023

 

By Mary Ann Cappiello & Xenia Hadjioannou on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Picture
Recently, the Biography Clearinghouse interviewed author Steve Sheinkin about his latest nonfiction book, Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe. Action-packed and filled with dramatic tension and intricate historical details, Sheinkin shares the experiences of Rudi Vrba and Greta Sidonová, two Jewish teenagers during World War II.

While the full video interview and transcript are available on our website, covering a range of questions regarding Sheinkin’s research and writing processes, we share an edited portion of it here on the CLA blog as an example of the complex decision-making that goes into writing narrative nonfiction for tween and teen readers. 

Interview Question
As you were working on the book and revising it, how did you balance crafting a narrative that builds tension, which as you mentioned earlier, gets the reader hooked and builds the narrative towards that climactic moment, and the need for exposition, which is oftentimes in the case of this book exposition about very difficult topics? What were the moments where you knew that you had to interrupt the action, pause the action to provide that information for your readers?

Steve Sheinkin’s Answer (edited for brevity): 
That’s doing narrative nonfiction for middle grade and YA, I think. That's my career essentially, trying to figure out how to do that……

I used to write textbooks. That's… you see how hesitant I was to confess that? But I used to write history textbooks where they don't have that problem. It's all just boring facts and figures and names and dates. And so I just don't want to ever do that. I'm still sorry and making amends for doing that. So I want it to be just story. And then I realize, wait a minute. I can’t be. I get jealous of people who write for adults because they could just say, “and then Pearl Harbor happened,” and then everyone knows what that means. I can't do that, and fair enough I shouldn't be able to, because it's unfair of me to assume that someone who's 12 or 14 has that background information, and they shouldn't have to, to pick up the book. I think that's part of what makes this, hopefully, makes one of my books valuable, is that they don't have to have background information….

I guess I hope it works that I start with just story…I am seeing all the best scenes where there's really well documented moments that have those elements of a scene that you want as a writer. .. You don't need to know them right away, but you do need to know them pretty early on, and that's why the first third of a book like this is always the hardest part. It’s kind of like a juggling act once the balls are going. It's okay. But getting them all in the air in the right order is the hard part. And so I'll write little bits of context. In this case the rise of Adolf Hitler, what the Nazis were doing. How anti-semitism was such, so central, to what the Nazis did, and and all of that…

I end up writing way too much of that, and I always do, and then kind of pare it down until it starts to feel right, and I work with my editor on that kind of stuff more than any other part of the book. I don't like to write the whole thing and then send it to her. I specifically like to try to write that first third as a draft and send it to her because it's just never, never good at first. It always has that problem of being clunky, and either not starting fast enough or we're not getting to the context soon enough, and those are kind of at odds with each other. 

You can get it right with enough back and forth, and trial and error… It's kind of like making a movie. You film both. You film all the scenes. You don't have to decide right away what order you're gonna edit them together in, but you know they're all going to be there.

Teaching Ideas

There are many different roles this fast-paced and moving book can play in the English Language Arts and Social Studies classroom. Below are two examples. For more, please see our full entry on Impossible Escape.
Picture

Punctuating Narrative with Exposition

Throughout Impossible Escape, Steve Sheinkin builds a tight narrative filled with action. Reading like a movie or a novel, the storyline builds tension, takes twists and turns, and moves towards a dramatic turning point and conclusion. But the book isn’t only the storyline. At times,  Sheinkin zooms in on a single event, within a single story, and then zooms out to provide a larger context or reveal a pattern across people and time.  

For example, on page 24, an old woman approaches Rudi, who is locked up in a small cell after getting beaten up and arrested in Hungary after fleeing Slovakia. She addresses him as “Mr. Jew” as she drops some food and cigarettes in his cell. Then Sheinkin begins to zoom out from this single event to note: “A kind gesture, but ominous also. He wasn’t a teenager anymore, not to most of the people in what he’d thought was his country.” In a further zoom out, Sheinkin goes on to explain that antisemitism was “hardly new in Europe,” and provides a brief overview of antisemitism across the centuries, from the medieval period to the 20th century. Sheinkin leverages the dramatic moment within his narrative to provide readers with necessary background knowledge to understand more deeply the dangers Rudi and Gerta and their friends and families faced. 

Ask your students what they notice about this scene on page 24 and the exposition that follows. What do they learn? Why did Sheinkin pause the narrative? Why is this information important? After having that conversation, play the portion of our interview with Sheinkin, where he discusses how, why, and when he punctuates narration with exposition: 00:22:36.190 -->  00:27:47.800. 

After discussing the video segment, have students 
  • Identify similar moments where narrative is punctuated by exposition throughout the book as well as in any other narrative nonfiction texts they might be reading. 
  • Practice this writing strategy by researching a historical event as a class - perhaps the Holocaust and World War II, perhaps something else related to your curriculum - and each writing a short narrative that includes important information in exposition.

Embracing Point of View in Nonfiction Writing

Nonfiction writing is often described as factual and objective, where the author and their perspective have no place. However, as noted in NCTE’s (2023) Position Statement on nonfiction literature, “though nonfiction has traditionally been thought of as offering an authoritative treatment of its topics, it is important for readers to understand that nonfiction, no matter how well researched and thorough, represents the authors’ perspectives and points of view.”  

In Impossible Escape readers can infer how Steve Sheinkin is positioned toward the events and the issues at hand by noticing how he chooses to describe them. For instance, he explicitly characterizes antisemitic stereotypes as garbage (p.8) and being “rooted in ignorance and lies” (p. 24).  Similarly, when Sheinkin writes about what Gerta did during the last months of the war, his admiration for her is clear when he notes: “Even after all her close call, she chose not to play it safe.” 

Steve Sheinkin as the author becomes even more clearly visible when he addresses the reader by asking rhetorical questions that pull us out of the narrative and prompt us to grapple with some weighty material. In our interview, Steve offers some valuable insight into his decision to use rhetorical questions (starting at 30:55).

At the very end of the book, Steve Sheinkin admits that he struggled with figuring out how to conclude the book, thinking that he needed to come up with a way to sum up the book with “some profound message to apply to daily life” (p. 219) and admitting that “this last little section was the hardest for me to write” (p. 219). You can hear Steve discuss this decision in the interview, starting at 34:39. In the end, he took a lesson from Rudi Vrba himself who would say that “the story is the thing” and encourage his audience to draw their own conclusions and interpretations. It is an interesting contrast to traditional storytelling that often ends with an explicit lesson or moral.
Invite students to look for the author while reading Impossible Escape as well as other nonfiction texts. How do those glimpses help readers infer the book creators’ emotional and intellectual positioning toward their topic? 


After finishing the book, encourage students to sit with the last few sentences: “Everything is in the story. You read the story. You know what to do” (p. 219).  Invite them to respond in any way that makes sense. That could involve writing, drawing, painting, or recording.  Plan a gallery walk or other opportunities for sharing these responses. 

When students are writing their next nonfiction text, encourage them to engage emotionally with their material, and to insert themselves in some way in the text.
Mary Ann Cappiello teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods at Lesley University and is a founding member of The Biography Clearinghouse. She is co-chair of CLA's Expert Class committee and a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8.

Xenia Hadjioannou is associate professor of language and literacy education at the Berks campus of Penn State University. She is president of CLA and co-editor of the CLA Blog. She is a founding member of The Biography Clearinghouse.
Picture

Search & Explore the Biography Clearinghouse’s Collection on Library Thing!

12/13/2022

 

By Xenia Hadjioannou & Mary Ann Cappiello on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Picture
Picture
Wondering how to find and curate biographies suited to the interests of your students or to your curricular needs? Frustrated by a piecemeal approach, cross-referencing booklists, award lists, and Google searches? The Biography Clearinghouse has a year end gift for you! 

We have created a collection of biographies for young people on LibraryThing, an online book cataloging service. The collection makes use of “tags” with which users can use to guide and focus their searches. This continually updated collection is intended as a tool for educators of all subjects and age groups, librarians, and anyone else who enjoys and works with biographies. We are busily tagging the books in our collection and will continue to add and tag more titles!

The best part about it? You can access our collection for free and without having to sign up for an account. You can search the collection by theme, literary elements, geographic location, format feature, profession/discipline, etc.  

To learn how to access, navigate, and search through the Biography Clearinghouse Collection review the information below.

How do I access the Biography Clearinghouse Collection?

Simply go to https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Teachwithbios. There you will see our entire catalog listing. In the “Tags” column you will see all the tags assigned to each book by members of the Biography Clearinghouse. 

Picture

How do I search through your catalog? 

  • I am looking for information on a particular biography. How do I search through your catalog?
If you already know the title of the book you are looking for, type it in the “Search this Library” field and hit search. You can also search by author or illustrator names.
Picture
For more advanced search options, you can click on the triangle next to the “Search this library” field to expand the search menu. You can then use the available options to constrain your search.
Picture
  • I am looking for biographies on a particular topic/theme or with certain characteristics. How do I run my search?
The easiest way to conduct a keyword search through our catalog is through our “Tags” list. To access our “Tags” list click on the “Tags” tab. The number in parenthesis next to each tag represents the number of biographies in our catalog to which that tag has been assigned.

Clicking on a tag will produce a listing of all books in our catalog we have annotated with it.

Picture
Have any questions? Biographies to add to our collection? Suggested tags? Please email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.
Xenia Hadjioannou is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Berks campus of Penn State University where she teaches and works with preservice teachers through various courses in language and literacy methodology. Xenia is the co-author of Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals. She is the Vice President and Website Manager of the Children's Literature Assembly, and a co-editor of The CLA Blog. 

Mary Ann Cappiello is a Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University, where she teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods. For twelve years, she blogged about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf. She is a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8. Mary Ann is the coauthor of Text Sets in Action: Pathways Through Content Area Literacy (2021).

#KidsLoveNonfiction: 10 Ways to Discover & Share Nonfiction with Young People this Fall

9/6/2022

 

By Mary Ann Cappiello, Xenia Hadjioannou, and Melissa Stewart

We are fortunate to be in the midst of a golden age for nonfiction literature for young people. Today’s nonfiction pushes boundaries in form and function, and its creators write about an ever expanding array of topics. In these books, young people encounter well-researched and nuanced explorations of cutting edge scientific discoveries, underexplored moments throughout history and in our current time, compelling accounts of historically marginalized and minoritized communities and perspectives, and more. 

As we advocated in our February 14, 2022, letter to The New York Times, #KidsLoveNonfiction! Indeed, several researchers investigating the reading habits and preferences of young children report that, when given the opportunity to self-select, the majority of children enjoy nonfiction as much as or more than fiction (Correia, 2011; Ives et al. 2020; Mohr, 2006; Repaskey et al., 2017). Yet, adults often assume that young people would rather read fiction, and are therefore hesitant to make nonfiction titles available to children or to devote time to exploring nonfiction with the young people in their lives.
As the school year begins, we want to remind all adults who are involved in the reading lives of children that: 
  • Reading nonfiction = reading. 
  • Nonfiction affirms young people’s interests.
  • Nonfiction deserves to be part of teachers’ considerations as they are setting up their libraries and other classroom spaces. 
  • Nonfiction books make engaging read alouds.  
  • Nonfiction books can help diversify the curriculum.
  • Nonfiction books can deepen explorations in the science classroom and help children make connections between science and the world around them.
  • Nonfiction books can infuse nuance into social studies topics and highlight the contributions and perspectives of historically silenced people. 
  • Nonfiction books can inspire and support lively book talks and ignite authentic and meaningful inquiry.
To raise awareness of the potential of nonfiction books to empower young people by feeding their interests and creating pathways to their passions, we’ve created the flyer 10 Ways to Discover & Share Nonfiction with Young People this Fall.  We hope it will find its way onto classroom walls, library displays, and home fridges and inspire teachers, librarians, parents, and all people who read with children.  

Have a wonderful school year!

Picture
Flyer PDF with clickable links
10 Ways
File Size: 104 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

References

Correia, M. P. (2011). Fiction vs. Informational Texts: Which Will Kindergartners Choose? Young Children, 66(6), 100–104.

Ives, S. T., Parsons, S. A., Parsons, A. W., Robertson, D. A., Daoud, N., Young, C., & Polk, L. (2020). Elementary Students’ Motivation to Read and Genre Preferences. Reading Psychology, 41(7), 660–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2020.1783143

Mohr, K. A. J. (2006). Children’s Choices for Recreational Reading: A Three-Part Investigation of Selection Preferences, Rationales, and Processes. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(1), 81–104. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3801_4

Repaskey, L. L., Schumm, J., & Johnson, J. (2017). First and Fourth Grade Boys’ and Girls’ Preferences For and Perceptions About Narrative and Expository Text. Reading Psychology, 38(8), 808–847. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2017.1344165
Mary Ann Cappiello teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods at Lesley University, blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf and Text Sets and Trade Books,  and is a founding member of The Biography Clearinghouse. She is a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8.

Xenia Hadjioannou is associate professor of language and literacy education at the Berks campus of Penn State University. She is vice-president of CLA and co-editor of the CLA Blog. She is a founding member of The Biography Clearinghouse.

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 200 science-themed nonfiction books for children and co-author of 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books.  Her highly-regarded website features a rich array of nonfiction writing resources.

Teaching and Learning Opportunities with Make Meatballs Sing

5/30/2022

 

By Denise Dávila on Behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Regarded as The Rebel Nun, the Pop Art Nun, and Andy Warhol's Kindred Spirit,  Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986) was a member of the Immaculate Heart Community of Los Angeles, California.  She created multimodal art prints that were social commentaries on poverty, injustice, and war.  As the artist of "The Rainbow Swash" (1971), the largest copyrighted rainbow in the world, and the designer of  US Postal Service's best selling "Love Stamp” (1985), Sister Corita also used her art and her voice to promote the kind of hope, love, and kindness that overcomes barriers and unites people. 

In the highly acclaimed picturebook biography Make Meatballs Sing: The Life and Art of Corita Kent (2021, Enchanted Lion Books), author Matthew Burgess and illustrator Kara Kramer engage readers in a multimodal exploration of an extraordinary person’s life and legacy that resulted in nearly “800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions” according to The Corita Art Center of Los Angeles, CA. Learn more about Corita Kent at:  www.corita.org.

The Biography Clearinghouse entry for Make Meatballs Sing includes and interview with Matthew Burgess and several recommendations for working with the book. Below is an excerpt of the teaching ideas in the entry.
Picture
Free Curriculum Guide

Using Viewfinders

Sister Corita Kent authored provocative multimodal compositions that were inspired by looking closely at ordinary objects and were imbued with intertextual meanings.  As suggested in Make Meatballs Sing, much of her work began by focusing her attention on specific elements and blocking out others.  She employed cardboard viewfinders with her students as tools for developing the skill of looking.  These next activities build upon the use of viewfinders in the classroom.  They are adapted from the Make Meatballs Sing Curriculum Guide.

If you have 1 - 2 hours


Make and Use Viewfinders
Invite students to make viewfinders, like those Sister Corita Kent asked her students to create, from everyday materials like recycled cardboard, heavy paper, or cardstock. Encourage students to use their finders to examine things in their classrooms, schools, homes, neighborhoods, and other venues.  Take a walking field trip in the vicinity of the school to take a closer look and find unexpected surprises. After returning to the classroom, invite students to write about what they noticed and to discuss their experiences in looking and seeing in a different way.  

If you have 1 - 2 days


Develop a Scavenger Hunt
Invite students to develop a scavenger hunt for another looking tour.  Welcome them to generate ideas for their types of objects, shapes, attributes, or other elements they should look on the tour. For example, students might search for things that are green, billowy, jagged, smooth, angular, etc.  Encourage students to bring a sketchbook to capture the images they find during the scavenger hunt.  Alternatively, they could use digital cameras to document their findings.  Upon returning to the classroom, encourage students to identify their favorite "find" from the hunt and to contribute it to a class collage.  Students could collaborate in the creation of a visual patchwork akin with the art collage that appears on the back jacket of Make Meatballs Sing.

If you have 1 - 2 weeks


Create a Multimodal Composition for Screen Painting  
Invite students to use their findings from their scavenger hunts to create multimodal compositions that incorporate images and texts.  Present an array of Sister Corita’s prints as models.  Encourage students to incorporate epigraphs or quotes from texts that are meaningful to them. Alternatively and/or additionally, invite students to create images based on their looking exercises that could be used for a simple screen painting project.  Several resources are available online for creating serigraphy with students.  Here is one approach that uses embroidery frames.
Denise Dávila is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies children’s literature and researches the home literacy practices of families with young children in under-resourced communities.

#KidsLoveNonfiction Campaign Follow-up

4/12/2022

 

by Kate Narita, introduction by Melissa Stewart

Picture
In February, CLA members Mary Ann Cappiello, Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University and Xenia Hadjioannou, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at Penn State University, sent a letter signed by more than 500 educators to The New York Times asking the paper to add children's nonfiction bestseller lists to parallel the current fiction-focused lists.

The letter was also published on more than 20 blogs that serve the children's literature community--including this one—and amplified on social media as part of the #KidsLoveNonfiction campaign. (To date, more than 2,100 people have signed it.)

A few weeks later, The New York Times responded, saying it had no current plans to add nonfiction lists at this time. Many people were disappointed by this decision, including fourth-grade teacher and CLA member Kate Narita, who has written the following essay, bravely sharing how the petition changed her thinking.

-- Melissa Strewart

Shattering My Implicit Bias Against Nonfiction by Kate Narita

My biggest aha moments in life have happened when I’ve become aware of an implicit bias that a few months earlier I would have told you I didn’t have.

At the end of last year, I would have told you with 100 percent certainty that I embrace and support nonfiction readers as much as fiction readers.
 
I would have told you about knowing that 42 percent of young readers prefer expository nonfiction and another 33 percent enjoy expository and narrative text equally.

I would have told you that I’ve celebrated professional books like Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep and 5 Kinds of Nonfiction on my podcast.

And I would have told you about the thousands of dollars I’ve spent building my nonfiction classroom book collection.

All that’s true, and yet, I also would have told you my husband and younger son weren’t readers.

I hadn’t seen my younger son, who’s now a 19-year old college student, read anything other than school assignments, since sixth grade.

Before he entered middle school, I had some success finding fiction series he liked, such as Warriors by Erin Hunter and The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer, but after he became a smartphone owner in seventh grade, he was only interested in the screen. It never occurred to me that maybe he was reading articles there as well as playing video games and using social media.
 
When my husband, a physics professor, picked up a novel like Harry Potter, he’d read a few pages in the beginning, a few in the middle, and a few at the end, and say he was done.
 
“That’s not reading,” I’d say.
 
When my sons and I discussed Harry Potter, my husband would say, “I don’t remember that part.”
 
I would reply, “That’s because you didn’t read it.”
5 kinds of nonfiction
Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep
Picture
The Narita Family
Infinite Powers Cover
Then, in January, my son mentioned a book he had read, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven Strogatz. “Oh,” I said. “Sounds interesting. Did you read it for your calculus class?”
 
“Yes,” he said. “And I really enjoyed it.”
 
Did his statement about enjoying a book wake me up to my implicit bias? No. But I did feel a shift inside me. I was pleasantly surprised and excited because I love talking about books. If he had read something and was excited about it, I could read it and discuss it with him, even if he had only read it because it was a class assignment. Here was a way I could deepen my relationship with him as an adult. Even if it was just a one-time occurrence.
 
I asked if I could read the book when he was done, and he brought it home the next time he visited.
 
Fast forward to February break. As my husband and I were packing for a trip to Maui to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, he spotted Infinite Powers in the pile of books I was sorting through on our ottoman and picked it up.
 
“What’s this?” he asked. When I explained, he asked if he could take it to Hawaii, and I nodded. I hadn’t read it yet because, to be honest, reading a whole book about calculus felt too daunting. Instead, I packed and read three books from Kate Messner’s  History Smashers series and Rukhsanna Guidroz’s Samira Surfs.

I also spotted a copy of Kristin Hannah’s  Fly Away in our condo. Since I had watched Hannah’s Firefly Lane on Netflix and was listening to The Four Winds on Libby, I couldn’t resist picking up Fly Away, and I devoured it in a day.
 
As my husband and I sat side-by-side reading on the beach, we talked about Infinite Powers. He told me that while he was enjoying the book, the author gave way too much credit to calculus and not nearly enough to physics.
 
He was kind of cranky about it. Actually, he was truly irritated. I was surprised that he was having an emotional response to the book, a nonfiction book. It had stirred up passion inside him, even though it wasn’t a novel.
 
Did his passion wake me up to my implicit bias? Not yet. But I did feel another shift. He was expressing emotion about a book, and I was listening. In the past, it had almost always been me expressing emotion about a novel and him listening.

Surely you're joking cover
In our almost thirty-year relationship, I could only think of one other time when he had emoted about a book. It was Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, which I read because he had read it multiple times and was so excited about it.
 
When we got back home, I spotted this petition (which you can still sign) on Twitter. Two professors of literacy,  Mary Ann Cappiello and Xenia Hadjioannou, had written a letter asking The New York Times to add three children’s nonfiction bestseller lists—one for picture books, one for middle grade, and one for young adults. I signed it because, of course, I fully supported nonfiction writers and readers!
 
A couple of weeks later, I saw on Facebook that, even though more than 2,000 people had signed the petition, The New York Times had refused to add children’s nonfiction bestseller lists. After a full day of teaching, I was tired, and reading this unfortunate news made me angry. I looked up from my phone.

Across the room, my younger son, who was home on spring break, was reading The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene for fun because he had liked Infinite Powers so much and wanted to keep reading and learning. Next to him, my husband was reading an article about the Green Bay Packers on the internet.

The Elegant Universe Cover
In that instant, a lightbulb clicked on in my mind, and an awareness of my implicit bias washed over me like a tidal wave.
 
My husband and younger son are readers. They have always been readers.
 
I just didn’t realize it because narratives and fiction aren’t their jam. But give them nonfiction on topics they find fascinating—math, physics, sports—and they’re all in. They’re curious people who read to learn. They want to know about the world, how it works, and their place in it.
 
The decisionmakers at The New York Times seem to have their own implicit bias against children’s nonfiction, and as long as they do not include lists highlighting these books, they’re failing to acknowledge the 42 percent of our youth who crave true texts. They’re also failing to open the eyes of adults who raise those kids, thinking they’re not readers.
 
Maybe we should petition The Wall Street Journal next.

Picture
Kate Narita teaches fourth grade at The Center School in Stow, Massachusetts. She’s also the author of 100 Bugs! A Counting Book and hosts the podcast Chalk + Ink: The Podcast for Teachers Who Write and Writers Who Teach. When she’s not teaching, writing, or podcasting you can catch Kate and her handsome hound, Buck, running or hiking on Mount Wachusett.

Books to help you spring into nature…

3/29/2022

 

By Kathryn Will and River Lusky

As we emerge from a long winter with the lengthening of days to warm the earth, I am drawn to books that get us thinking about nature–the plant and animal life in the world. As the NCBLA committee will tell you, I love books about nature, and this year many of the books we reviewed for the 2022 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts award list were about the natural world. 
 
For this text set we chose three books that leverage nonfiction, poetry, and a picture book to develop content knowledge, build vocabulary, and encourage divergent thinking about the natural world. They invite readers to be curious about nature in both big and small ways. Teachers can easily deepen and extend the texts through a variety of activities, and we have created a few to get you started.

Wonder Walkers

Wonder Walkers cover
In the book Wonder Walkers, written and illustrated by Micha Archer and published by Penguin House, readers are invited to notice and wonder in the everyday natural world around them through metaphorical thinking. The children in the story examine the world around them with varying perspectives, asking questions such as, “Are trees the sky’s legs? Is the wind the world breathing?” The text and beautiful collages synergistically invite the readers to imagine what they see with genuine curiosity, to observe and ask questions about the natural world around them.
 
After reading the book, take your classroom outside for a walk to provide students with the opportunity to notice nature. Invite them to sketch something they find before giving them time for quiet reflection while listening to the natural world around them as they make their own wonderings like the children in the book. The individual wonderings could even be combined for a class book. Our Wonder Walk Resource can be helpful in supporting students' note-taking. To access the document and create a copy for your use, click on the "Make a Copy" button.
If you are interested in learning more about how Micah Archer creates her collages check out the two videos below. The first provides a a brief glimpse of her printmaking, and the second offers a much more extensive look into how she creates the collage materials and assembles them for the book.

What's inside a flower and other questions about science and nature

What's inside a flower cover
What's inside a flower and other questions about science and nature, written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky, published by Crown Books for Young Readers, invites the reader into the how and why of flowers. In this book the reader journeys through a flower with detailed and mature illustrations down to the roots, up the stem, and into the bud highlighting each intricate aspect of the parts of a flower. The exploratory journey through the biology of flowers as well as what other creatures assist and benefit from flowers, will have students on the edge of their seats asking questions. With rich backmatter, the book encourages further exploration of this topic.
 
After an initial read of What’s Inside a Flower the students may use it as a reference book, as students use cut flowers to sketch, dissect, and label the parts of the flower. To amplify this lesson, teachers could turn their classroom into a garden or use their school gardens if available. Having each student plant their own flower and record daily or weekly observations, perhaps adding variables like amount of sunlight, presence of earthworms, or watering rate to allow students to compare and contrast their plant growth rate. Rachel Ignostofsky has created multiple free resources for you to use for these activities.
Author Read Aloud. Brightly Storytime is is a co-production of Penguin Random House.

The dirt book: Poems about animals that live beneath our feet

Picture
The dirt book: Poems about animals that live beneath our feet, written by David L. Harrison, illustrated by Kate Cosgrove, published by Holiday House is a book of vertical panoramas with one poem per page. The 15 poems in this book might pique your interest in the world beneath your feet not often thought of. The reader journeys with creatures like a doodlebug and a chipmunk through a series of poems with beautifully detailed illustrations that depict their below ground habitats. An author’s notes and bibliography invite the reader to extend their learning. 
 
These poems are perfect for choral reading and micro episodes of reader’s theater.  Try a reader’s theater by having groups of students pick a favorite poem and after multiple reads, act it out for the class. Or as a class, you might consider choosing something like a creek or a tree in your school environment and using the structure of this text to consider purposeful research about the various creatures who live within the boundary of place to create a book of poems. 
 
An interview with the author on Deborah Calb's Blog provides interesting insights into the book.

Announcing the 2022 NCBLA list

Celebrating the 2022 Notable Children's books
These are just three of the 774 books the seven members of the Notable Children’s Books in Language Arts book award committee read and reviewed for consideration of selection for the 30-book list created annually. The careful analysis and rich discussions over monthly (and sometimes weekly) Zoom sessions allowed us to create a thoughtful list that meets the charge of the committee.
 
The charge of the seven-member national committee is to select 30 books that best exemplify the criteria established for the Notables Award. Books considered for this annual list are works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written for children, grades K-8. The books selected for the list must:
  1. be published the year preceding the award year (i.e., books published in 2015 are considered for the 2016 list);
  2. have an appealing format;
  3. be of enduring quality;
  4. meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written; and
  5. meet one or more of the following criteria:
    1. deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language;
    2. demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style; and/or
    3. invite child response or participation.
We are really excited about the final list for the 2022 (copyright 2021) Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts list and hope you will be too! 

2022 NCBLA Committee members

Kathryn Will, Chair (University of Maine Farmington) @KWsLitCrew
Vera Ahihya (Brooklyn Arbor Elementary School) @thetututeacher
Patrick Andrus (Eden Prairie School District, Minnesota) @patrickontwit
Dorian Harrison (Ohio State University at Newark)
Laretta Henderson (Eastern Illinois University) @EIU_PKthru12GEd
Janine Schall (The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)
Fran Wilson (Madeira Elementary School, Ohio) @mrswilsons2nd

 *All NCBLA Committee members are members of CLA
Kathryn Will is Assistant Professor Literacy at the University of Maine Farmington. She served as Chair of the 2022 Notable Children’s Books in Language Arts committee.
River Lusky is an undergraduate student at the University of Maine Farmington.

Women’s History Month

3/1/2022

 

By Julie Waugh and Erika Thulin Dawes on behalf of The Biography Clearinghouse.

Building Zaha cover
March is Women’s History month and picturebook biographies are a powerful way to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of women. In the most recent Biography Clearinghouse entry,  we explore Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s picture book biography Building Zaha: The Story of Architect Zaha Hadid. As a child, Zaha Hadid was fascinated by aspects of her surroundings that others passed by without observing. Her eye for the beauty in nature developed into a vision for architecture that challenged existing perceptions of what a building could be. In Building Zaha, Victoria Tentler-Krylov describes how these seeds of interest planted in childhood grew into a career and a passionate commitment to an artform. Tentler-Krylov’s water illustrations soar across the page, lifting readers into Zaha’s vision of what humankind’s structures might aspire to be. 

In the Biography Clearinghouse entry for Building Zaha, you will find an interview, in which Victoria Tentler-Krylov describes how her own education as an architect influenced her writing of Zaha Hadid’s story. You’ll find teaching ideas that focus on character development, mentoring, and goal setting, as well as ideas that build content knowledge about the relationship between architecture and nature, the design processes of architecture, and women leaders in the field. Like us, you will be inspired by the lessons that author/ illustrator Victoria Tentler-Krylov learned from studying the life of Zaha Hadid: “Trust your own voice. Trust your own vision.”

Here is an excerpt of the teaching ideas in the Biography Clearinghouse entry for Building Zaha:

Exploring Zaha’s Designs

The World is not a Rectangle Cover
Zaha Hadid became known as “the queen of the curve” in the architecture world.  She created buildings with shapes that people thought impossible to build. Invite students to explore, notice, and wonder with Zaha Hadid’s amazing projects:
  • A Tour of Zaha Hadid’s Most Iconic Buildings from Google Arts and Culture
  • 30 Projects That Define Zaha Hadid’s Style from Rethinking the Future
  • At her death, the BBC created this short video that looks back on Zaha’s work.
  • For a slightly longer look at her life, watch Curious Muse’s Zaha Hadid in 7 Minutes.
  • Google Arts and Culture also has a site Zaha Hadid; Groundbreaking Architect and Visionary.
  • Zaha Hadid’s Architects continues the work of Zaha Hadid.  When she died in 2016 her company had 36 projects underway.  

Another recent children's book biography about Zaha Hadid is The World is Not a Rectangle by Jeanette Winter.  Winter’s book focuses heavily on how Zaha Hadid’s work is influenced by the natural world, whereas Tentler-Krylov’s book focuses more on Zaha the person.  The paired texts could provide a powerful invitation for students to compare and contrast the different ways in which authors made choices about how to share a person’s life in picture book format. 

Breaking Boundaries: Female Architects

Throughout her career, Zaha Hadid encountered stumbling blocks. In the Biography Clearinghouse interview, Victoria Tentler-Krylov describes how her research into Zaha’s life revealed that Zaha wondered how those obstacles related to her identities as a woman and as a Muslim. Women continue to be underrepresented in the field of architecture. After reading Building Zaha, introduce your students to the work of Maya Lin, by reading Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines (written by Jeanne Walker Harvey, illustrated by Dow Phumiruk, Henry Holt, 2017). Compare and contrast the lives, experiences, and accomplishments of these two renowned female architects. Extend your study of women in architecture, by exploring the digital resources below. Connect with a female architect in your community who is willing to share her experiences in the field with your students.
Women of Steel and Stone
ARCHUTE: The 25 Top Female Architects Changing the Architecture Industry


Black Architects on their Challenges, Successes, and Hope for the Future
CULTURED: 15 Architects on Being Black in Architecture 



Early Black Female Architects
MADAME ARCHITECT:  "That [Most] Exceptional One": Early Black Female Architects by Kate Reggev

Designing for Form and Function: Thinking Like an Architect

Victoria Tentler-Krylov shared how one of her favorite illustrations in Building Zaha is the spread where a young Zaha is the only character in a crowded space who is looking up in a beautiful mosque.  Looking closely and wondering can help you think and work like an architect.  Looking closely and wondering can also help you focus on form (what a space looks like) in architecture, and how well that form meets function (what is going to happen in the designed space).  Form and function are ideas that need to work hand in hand for an architect to create a successful place to live or work.

Some people told Zaha Hadid that form was more important to her than function.  She was criticized that her creative, uniquely designed spaces did not use space as well as they could, or did not use space as efficiently as possible.  This was  part of why, early in her career, people told Zaha that she would only be a “paper architect” - an architect that would only have designs on paper and not made into buildings.
If you have 1-2 hours…

If you have 1-2 days…

If you have 1-2 weeks…

Invite students to look closely at your own classroom. What do you notice about how it is formed?  How well does the way it is designed help you learn?  How could you improve your classroom’s design to make it a better place to learn? Record some ideas and make some initial sketches. 
Zaha Hadid started many of her earlier architectural plans with paint and brush. After sharing ideas about how the classroom could be improved and redesigned, invite students to use different media to create initial plans for a newly designed classroom, much the same way that she did.  You may wish to share some of Zaha’s initial architectural artwork to inspire them.

Zaha Hadid was one of the first people to predict that computers would transform the architectural design process.  It is possible that computers allowed her to create some of the unique shapes and structures that many thought were not possible. Collaborate with a local architect who can demonstrate their use of computer programs in their process of design. Visit with the architect in person or by Zoom so that students can see the architect's sketches and final plans. Ask questions about how the architect considers form and function in their design.

Discuss how plans become blueprints that serve as guides for the construction of a building. Invite your students to revisit the initial classroom design plans they created with an eye for the relationship between form and function. How does the structure of the classroom they have created relate to its proposed use? Pair students so that they can describe their classroom plans to a classmate to get feedback. Next, ask students to create a more blueprint-like sketch of their envisioned classroom. 

Some students may be up for the challenge to use Google Sketch Up to create a structure from its creative beginnings to a model that you can walk through virtually.   

Additional Resources:

The Guggenheim Museum in New York has a repository interesting resources for teachers, with lesson plans, entitled Form Follows Function.

Sebastian, S., Shankar, R. & Al Qeisi, S. (2018). Design approach of Zaha Hadid from vocabularies and design techniques. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research. 5 (6), 495-503.

Other Recently Featured Biographies

Biography Clearinghouse Logo
  • Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom
  • Sharuko: ​El Arqueólogo Peruano/ Peruvian Archaeologist
  • Eleanor Makes her Mark: How Eleanor Roosevelt Reached Out, Spoke up, and Changed the World
Erika Thulin Dawes is Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University  where she teaches courses in children’s literature and early childhood literacy. She blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf, a School Library Journal blog, and is a former chair of NCTE’s Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children.

Julie Waugh
teaches 8th grade ELA at Smith Junior High and serves as an Inquiry Coach for Mesa Public Schools.  She delights in the company of children surrounded and inspired by books. A longtime member of NCTE, and an enthusiastic newer member of CLA, Julie is a former committee member of NCTE's Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.

#KidsLoveNonfiction Campaign

2/14/2022

 
This morning, Mary Ann Cappiello, Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University, and Xenia Hadjioannou, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Harrisburg campus of Penn State University and co-editor of the CLA Blog, sent the letter below to The New York Times requesting that the paper add three children's nonfiction bestseller lists to parallel the existing picture book, middle grade, and young adult lists, which focus on fiction. The submitted letter included the signatures of more than 500 educators and librarians, as well as the institutional signatures of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE.

This change will align the children's lists with the adult bestseller lists, which separate nonfiction and fiction. It will also acknowledge the incredible vibrancy of children's nonfiction available today and support the substantial body of research showing that many children prefer nonfiction and still others enjoy fiction and nonfiction equally.

If you support this request, please follow the signature collection form link to add your name and affiliation to the more than 500 educators and librarians who have already endorsed the effort. Your information will be added to the letter but your email address will remain private.

Picture

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Nonfiction books for young people are in a golden age of creativity, information-sharing, and reader-appeal. But the genre suffers from an image problem and an awareness problem. The New York Times can play a role in changing that by adding a set of Nonfiction Best Seller lists for young people: one for picture books, one for middle grade literature, and one for young adult literature.  

Today’s nonfiction authors and illustrators are depicting marginalized and minority communities throughout history and in our current moment. They are sharing scientific phenomena and cutting-edge discoveries. They are bearing witness to how art forms shift and transform, and illuminating historical documents and artifacts long ignored. Some of these book creators are themselves scientists or historians, journalists or jurists, athletes or artists, models of active learning and agency for young people passionate about specific topics and subject areas. Today’s nonfiction continues to push boundaries in form and function. These innovative titles engage, inform, and inspire readers from birth to high school.  

Babies delight in board books that offer them photographs of other babies’ faces. Toddlers and preschoolers fascinated by the world around them pore over books about insects, animals, and the seasons. Children, tweens, and teens are hungry for titles about real people that look like them and share their religion, cultural background, or geographical location, and they devour books about people living different lives at different times and in different places. Info-loving kids are captivated by fact books and field guides that fuel their passions. Young tinkerers, inventors, and creators seek out how-to books that guide them in making meals, building models, knitting garments, and more. Numerous studies have described such readers and their passionate interest in nonfiction (Jobe & Dayton-Sakari, 2002; Moss and Hendershot, 2002; Mohr, 2006). Young people are naturally curious about their world. When they are allowed to follow their passions and explore what interests them, it bolsters their overall wellbeing. And the more young people read, the more they grow as readers, writers, and critical thinkers (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2021; Van Bergen et al., 2021).

Research provides clear evidence that many children prefer nonfiction for their independent reading, and many more select it to pursue information about their particular interests (Doiron, 2003; Repaskey et al., 2017; Robertson & Reese, 2017; Kotaman & Tekin, 2017). Creative and engaging nonfiction titles can also enhance and support science, social studies, and language arts curricula. And yet, all too often, children, parents, and teachers do not know about recently published nonfiction books. Bookstores generally have only a few shelves devoted to the genre. And classroom and school library book collections remain dominated by fiction. If families, caregivers, and educators were aware of the high-quality nonfiction that is published for children every year, the reading lives of children and their educational experiences could be significantly enriched.
How can The New York Times help resolve the gap between readers’ yearning for engaging nonfiction, on the one hand, and their lack of knowledge of its existence, on the other? By maintaining separate fiction and nonfiction best seller lists for young readers just as the Book Review does for adults.

The New York Times Best Sellers lists constitute a vital cultural touchstone, capturing the interests of readers and trends in the publishing world. Since their debut in October of 1931, these lists have evolved to reflect changing trends in publishing and to better inform the public about readers’ habits. We value the addition of the multi-format Children’s Best Seller list in July 2000 and subsequent lists organized by format in October 2004. Though the primary purpose of these lists is to inform, they undeniably play an important role in shaping what publishers publish and what children read.
Adding children’s nonfiction best-seller lists would:
  • Help family members, caregivers, and educators identify worthy nonfiction titles.
  • Provide a resource for bibliophiles—including book-loving children—of materials that satisfy their curiosity.
  • Influence publishers’ decision-making.
  • Inform the public about innovative ways to convey information and ideas through words and images.
  • Inspire schools and public libraries to showcase nonfiction, broadening its appeal and deepening respect for truth.

We, the undersigned, strongly believe that by adding a set of nonfiction best-seller lists for young people, The New York Times can help ensure that more children, tweens, and teens have access to books they love. Thank you for considering our request.

Dr. Mary Ann Cappiello 
Professor, Language and Literacy
Graduate School of Education, Lesley University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 
Former Chair, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Committee, Blogger at The Classroom Bookshelf of School Library Journal, Founding Member of The Biography Clearinghouse.  
 
Dr. Xenia Hadjioannou
Associate Professor, Language and Literacy Education
Penn State University, Harrisburg Campus
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Vice President of the Children’s Literature Assembly (CLA) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), co-editor of The CLA Blog, Founding Member of The Biography Clearinghouse.

References

Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. M. (2021). Reading volume and reading achievement: A review of recent research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S231–S238. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404

Correia, M. (2011). Fiction vs. informational texts: Which will your kindergarteners choose? Young Children, 66(6), 100-104.

Doiron, R. (2003). Boy books, girl books: Should we re-organize our school library collections? Teacher Librarian, 30(3), 14.

Kotaman H. & Tekin A.K. (2017). Informational and fictional books: young children's book preferences and teachers' perspectives. Early Child Development and Care, 187(3-4), 600-614, DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1236092

Jobe, R., & Dayton-Sakari, M. (2002). Infokids: How to use nonfiction to turn reluctant readers into enthusiastic learners. Pembroke.

Mohr, K. A. J. (2006). Children’s choices for recreational reading: A three-part investigation of selection preferences, rationales, and processes. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(1), 81–104. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3801_4

Moss, B. &  Hendershot, J. (2002). Exploring sixth graders' selection of nonfiction trade books: when students are given the opportunity to select nonfiction books, motivation for reading improves. The Reading Teacher, 56 (1), 6-17.

Repaskey, L., Schumm, J. & Johnson, J. (2017). First and fourth grade boys’ and girls’ preferences for and perceptions about narrative and expository text. Reading Psychology, 38(8), 808-847.

Robertson, Sarah-Jane L. & Reese, Elaine. (2017). The very hungry caterpillar turned into a butterfly: Children's and parents' enjoyment of different book genres. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(1), 3-25.

Van Bergen, E., Vasalampi, K., & Torppa, M. (2021). How are practice and performance related? Development of reading from age 5 to 15. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(3), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.309.
If you support the request to add three children's nonfiction bestseller lists to parallel the existing picture book, middle grade, and young adult lists, which focus on fiction, please add your name and affiliation to the signature collection form.
<<Previous

    Authors:
    CLA Members

    Supporting PreK-12 and university teachers as they share children’s literature with their students in all classroom contexts.

    Disclaimer
    The opinions and ideas posted in the individual entries are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of CLA or the Blog Editors.

    Blog Editors

    Liz Thackeray Nelson
    Emmaline Ellis
    Jennifer Slagus
    Sara K. Sterner
    Megan Van Deventer

    contribute to the blog

    Instructions to Authors

    If you are a current CLA member and you would like to contribute a post to the CLA Blog, please read the Instructions to Authors and email co-editor Liz Thackeray Nelson with your idea.


    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020

    Categories

    All
    Activism
    Advocacy
    African American Literature
    Agency
    All Grades
    American Indian
    Antiracism
    Art
    Asian American
    Authors
    Award Books
    Awards
    Back To School
    Barbara Kiefer
    Biography
    Black Culture
    Black Freedom Movement
    Bonnie Campbell Hill Award
    Book Bans
    Book Challenges
    Book Discussion Guides
    Censorship
    Chapter Books
    Children's Literature
    Civil Rights Movement
    CLA Auction
    CLA Breakfast
    CLA Conference
    CLA Elections
    CLA Expert Class
    Classroom Ideas
    Collaboration
    Comprehension Strategies
    Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    COVID
    Creativity
    Creativity Sponsors
    Critical Literacy
    Crossover Literature
    Cultural Relevance
    Culture
    Current Events
    Digital Literacy
    Disciplinary Literacy
    Distance Learning
    Diverse Books
    Diversity
    Early Chapter Books
    Emergent Bilinguals
    Endowment
    Family Literacy
    First Week Books
    First Week Of School
    Garden
    Global Children’s And Adolescent Literature
    Global Children’s And Adolescent Literature
    Global Literature
    Graduate
    Graduate School
    Graphic Novel
    High School
    Historical Fiction
    Holocaust
    Identity
    Illustrators
    Indigenous
    Indigenous Stories
    Innovators
    Intercultural Understanding
    Intermediate Grades
    International Children's Literature
    Journal Of Children's Literature
    Language Arts
    Language Learners
    LCBTQ+ Books
    Librarians
    Literacy Leadership
    #MeToo Movement
    Middle Grade Literature
    Middle Grades
    Middle School
    Mindfulness
    Multiliteracies
    Museum
    Native Americans
    Nature
    NCBLA List
    NCTE
    NCTE 2023
    Neurodiversity
    Nonfiction Books
    Notables
    Nurturing Lifelong Readers
    Outside
    #OwnVoices
    Picture Books
    Picturebooks
    Poetic Picturebooks
    Poetry
    Preschool
    Primary Grades
    Primary Sources
    Print Features
    Professional Resources
    Reading Engagement
    Research
    Research Resource
    Research To Practice
    Science
    Science Fiction
    Self-selected Texts
    Small Publishers And Imprints
    Social Justice
    Social Media
    Social Studies
    Socioemotional Learning
    Sports Books
    STEAM
    STEM
    Storytelling
    Summer Camps
    Summer Programs
    Teacher
    Teaching Reading
    Teaching Resources
    Teaching Writing
    Text Sets
    The Arts
    Tradition
    Translanguaging
    Trauma
    Tribute
    Ukraine
    Undergraduate
    Using Technology
    Verse Novels
    Virtual Library
    Vivian Yenika Agbaw Student Conference Grant
    Vivian Yenika-Agbaw Student Conference Grant
    Vocabulary
    War
    #WeNeedDiverseBooks
    YA Lit
    Young Adult Literature

    RSS Feed

CLA

About CLA
CLA Board & Committees
Membership
Merchandise
Endowment Fund

Grants & Awards

CLA Research Award
Bonnie Campbell Hill Award
CLA Early Career Award
CLA Student Travel Grant

Journal of Children's Literature

Write for JCL
JCL Editors

The CLA Blog

Notables

Current List
Notables Archive

Conference

Resources

CLA-sponsored NCTE Position Statements
Children's Literature Course Syllabi
Children's Literature Blogs

CLA @NCTE

Children's Literature Assembly Breakfast
Expert Class
Other CLA-sponsored Sessions
Art Auction

Members-Only Content

CLA Video Library
CLA Newsletter Archive

JCL Past Issues Archive

Current JCL Issue
JCL Podcasts

© COPYRIGHT 2018.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Photo from chocolatedazzles
  • Home
  • Join/Donate
  • Members Only
  • Journal
  • Notables
  • Grants & Awards
  • Resources
  • CLA @ NCTE
  • Conference
  • About
  • CLA Blog