Children's Books discussion

Is there a go-to place for following quality kids nonfiction? It seems like there is so much out there, but I'd love to see some reviews! I'm interested in everything from great picture books like from Steve Jenkins, to narrative biographies and historical accounts, to science reads. My 5 yr-old loves "real" stories, and I'd like to combine good info with good writing, if possible.

Are you looking mostly for the younger group --say under 8? I can recommend some great ones for 8 and older.

My own kids are under 8, but I'm still interested in older books. Is there a place in this group to track nonfiction?

Not sure if there's a specific folder for nonfiction...although many themes include nonfiction titles. I know that in the themes folder, there is a thread on biographies. There are also threads on many historical topics such as Underground Railroad, Ancient Rome, and so on. Those threads would contain a mixture of fiction and nonfiction but might give you some good titles.

You mentioned my favorite nonfiction author, Steve Jenkins. I love his work. I also really like Nic Bishop. He writes books about animals and includes amazing photographs of the animals.

The other thing you might do is on your home page, click on recommendations. If you've read and reviewed some nonfiction (for instance by Steve Jenkins), then they will have a list of similar titles that you might enjoy. Sometimes I find some great recommendations that way.

Finally, you might request to be friends or follow some of the people in this group. I am friends with or follow several of the people and often get good recommendations from seeing what they are reading.

A source for good non-fiction for kids (and for other types of books too) are the Cybils Awards (www.cybils.com); every year panels of librarians, authors, bloggers, teachers, and parents (including me, in science fiction and fantasy) evaluate hundreds of books in various categories, including non-fiction picture books, and non-fiction for older kids/teens, and create shortlists of the books that have both literary merit and tons of kid appeal. You can see the lists of finalists off to the right at the Cybils website.

I would also suggest the website I.N.K. - interesting nonfiction for Kids. You can get to it via a link on Betsy Bird's fuse#8 website on the SLJ site. Authors I would recommend for younger nonfiction readers would be Steve Jenkins, Joyce Sidman (poetry on nonfiction topics), Nic Bishop, Jean Craighead George, and Seymour Simon.

Joyce Sidman, for example Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors, is my latest bestest fave. ;)

These are great suggestions, thanks so much. I'll definitely look into the biography thread, as well as some of the other historical topics. And I'll look at the awards and links mentioned. Thanks for being such an amazing resource!

City Chickens by Christine Heppermann I recently read this book. I think this nonfiction book is more for older children although there are lots of bold and bright pictures. The opening really draws children and eveyone in as there is a picture of someone looking through the peep hole into the chicken rescue, which the book is written about. At times the book is rather poetic. It weaves together a lot of information and is biographical about the couple who runs the chicken run. It also tells about crues practices towards chickens. I found out they are the most abused of all animals. I never thought of chickens as animals I could bond with prior to reading this book.

That looks interesting, Barbara, thanks for posting!

I want to thank David for his suggestion of the site I.N.K. It is geared more towards authors than readers but they do highlight lots of great nonfiction, and I have read quite a few titles (and added many to my to read list) from following this site.

The Children's Book Council has great resources on its website for notable social studies books, outstanding science books, and other lists of best books:

http://www.cbcbooks.org/notable-socia...
http://www.cbcbooks.org/outstanding-s...

These lists include the best nonfiction children's books published in these subject areas each year.

Also check out the Orbis Pictus awards for outstanding nonfiction for children:

http://www.ncte.org/awards/orbispictus

You may also wish to check out the John Burroughs awards for natural history writing which has a category for children's books.

Non only did my own nonfiction books make their way onto these lists, but, as a librarian, I often relied on them for collection development and, as a parent, in selecting books for my children.

I've found these lists to be helpful because the Caldecott and Newberry books are not the only children's books published every year and they're often not the best books.

Thank you all!
I'd love to keep this thread alive as we read (or remember) individual titles that we can personally vouch for, too.

Thanks so much for the links provided to CBC and Orbis Pictus awards, these are great reference sites. We have been reading many of the Steve Jenkins books and I've also enjoyed the drawings in Simon Seymour's simple but factual books. Brian Floca's recent books are quite amazing and I was also very impressed with An Egg Is Quiet which is part of a series. Yet another random book that we liked for its poetical quality was A Platypus, Probably.

We now have a big stack of non fiction titles to read through. During our last trip to the library, my son (5) went to see the children's librarian to ask for "books about war". She initially came a bit short, but together with my son they decided that worst case they would find some books on Abraham Lincoln, so she led us to the biography section where we picked out over a dozen very interesting looking books. For better or for worse, not much "war stuff" though!

Oh, and how could I forget Ruth Heller! I love that she's so thorough and careful, I've gained clarity of perspective about grammar from such books as Kites Sail High. Her nature books are wonderful, too, for example Plants That Never Ever Bloom. And the pictures are so gorgeous, and the rhymes so easy, one doesn't necessarily realize one is learning!

I just recently learned of the Eureka awards given for nonfiction by the California Reading Association. I have only read a couple of the books on the list so far, but they were wonderful. So that's another resource. Here is the link for this year's list. http://www.californiareads.org/res/eu...

For example, I just read Best Foot Forward. Here is my review:
I love, love, love the photographs in this book about animal feet. It starts by showing a double page spread of an animal foot and asking "Whose foot is this?" Even my 10 year old loved guessing. My 8 year old and 5 year old did too. Then the next page would tell which animal it belonged to and how the animal uses its foot/flipper/claw. Then the other side of the page would show 2-4 photos of other animals with interesting (often similar) feet. This pattern then repeats with a new set of animals. I read this in the car and my husband (who isn't much of a reader) even asked me to show him a few of the photos as I read aloud or would say, "really?" Or "I didn't know that." It is not a very long book, but it was very high interest.

We all loved that on the author bio page instead of having a photo of the author, it had a photo of his foot.

Oh gosh - I can see my to-read list growing even more, as I head off to look at the lists. Thanks!

We loved Best Foot Forward! It was in the Scholastic catalogue just recently. I'm usually very partial to drawings versus photos in non fiction, but these are so beautiful, artistic and intriguing. I just wished the book had been longer. Waiting now for a new book to come out, Animal Architecture, but judging from the cover it might contain more of the same, which would be awesome!

A quick look at the list of Eureka Awards revealed another title we recently enjoyed, Nasreddine. Not sure why that ranks as non fiction, but it's a good read non the same, very unique illustrator, Odile Weulersse.

Nasreddine is non-fiction because it's traditional folklore. Just as poetry, plays, Grimm stories, and 'tales from other lands' are shelved non-fiction.

(At least in libraries in the US.)

And the Dewey number, 813, is for fiction, although I don't know of any American libraries that put their fiction in the Dewey number. The libraries I know of just use the word "Fiction" for their adult, teen and children's fiction.

Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook, Rachel Carson, and It Came From Ohio: My Life As A Writer are the best nonfiction I can think of. :)

Another award for quality non-fiction children's books is the Sibert Award, administered by the American Library Association (ala.org). Look for Youth Media awards.

We have some of Sneed B. Collard III work in our library that are pretty popular Teeth is one of the ones that is hard to keep around.