his is a book about writing (and reading) nonfiction with children in their elementary years of schooling. In these chapters we define how we have come to understand nonfiction, and we describe what it looks like in our classrooms. Recent educational policies and standards have encouraged the use of nonfiction in earlier grades than has been common in past practice. And, in fact, there seems to be every reason to do so. Many studies suggest the use of nonfiction with young children is a valuable classroom practice. Reading and writing nonfiction offers opportunities for children to develop conceptual understandings and acquire scientific language in a familiar picturebook format. In turn these same picturebooks act as mentor texts for children as they begin to write their own texts, using features common to the nonfiction as they combine genres to create a hybrid text or approximate a more mature representation of the genre. Underlying all these educational practices, moreover, are the curiosity and wonder that are a natural part of the process of nonfiction writing.
Throughout this book we use the term nonfiction (rather than the equally common term, informational) or nonfiction picturebook (writing picturebook rather than picture book indicates that pictures and words can’t be separated). From our experiences in our own classrooms and from observations of other elementary classrooms, the term nonfiction comes closest to capturing the understanding that teachers and children have when writing this genre. As author Penny Colman (2007) states: “Nonfiction is writing about reality (real people, places, events, ideas, feelings, things) in which nothing is made up.” Echoing Colman’s words, many teachers of young children use similar language (e.g., real, not made up, not fake) when describing nonfiction to their students.
Jane Moore (Faculty)