Reviewed by: Ashley Browning
Format: Bibliography
Item Title (APA Style):
Baxter, K. & Kochel, M. (2008). Gotcha good! : Nonfiction books to get kids excited about reading. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.
Item Call Number:
Z1037 .B39 2008
Reviewed in:
Kerlin, J. (2008). Professional reading [Review of the book Gotcha good!: Nonfiction books to get kids excited about reading by K. Baxter & M. Kochel]. School Library Journal, 54(12): 160. Retrieved June 14, 2012, from Academic Search Premier.
Description:
This book list provides citations for over 1100 nonfiction books for grades 3-8 that have received positive reviews from Hornbook, Booklist, and School Library Journal.
Relevance and Relationship—
This book would be very helpful to the LMS and students because it would give the LMS a starting place to recommend quality non-fiction that will be of interest to students in the upper elementary levels. This book would be appropriate for the collection analyzed during my field experience hours because several sections of the non-fiction section were dated and contained encyclopedias and dictionaries that sometimes don’t interest young readers. This book costs $33.60 which is comparable to many large non-fiction works.
Purpose:—
This bibliography contains titles on varied topics. This work contains titles of interest to upper elementary students. The seventh and eighth grade titles would be ideal for advanced readers.
The variety of titles would be a good way to integrate literature into Science, Social Studies and Arts/Humanities and to recommend non-fiction titles to young readers.
Validity—
The authors have previously compiled other “Gotcha” bibliographies, which have received favorable reviews. The books included in this bibliography have been positively reviewed by Hornbook, Booklist, and School Library Journal. This book was published in 2008 and includes books from 2005-2008 with a few older ones the authors feel need to be included as exemplary non-fiction works.
Format– The book is written in 7 chapters that are built around high interest topics for kids. It contains book descriptions and book talks to guide librarians and teachers to non-fiction books of interest to kids. It contains colorful pictures of the book covers and also gives suggested ages for each book in the bibliography. Some of the new features include booklists to copy and save and profiles and interviews of some creative authors.
Arrangement and Presentation:
It also includes reproducible bookmarks that offer the top ten titles for each of the seven subject areas are also included. The book contains an author and title index with a few keywords mixed in, but no subcategory index is provided. There is no index leading readers to where the bookmarks can be found within the book.
Diversity:
This book is available only in English. It provides citations for books support cultural diversity.