The Tree in the Courtyard is another nonfiction picture book that uses fictional elements to tell a nonfiction story. Here, the story of Anne Frank’s experience of hiding from the Nazis is told from the point-of-view of the horse chestnut tree growing in the courtyard outside her hiding place. The story is written in the […]
Nonfiction is nonfiction and fiction is fiction. But sometimes picture books use a fictional framework to present nonfiction content. Sometimes that’s called historical fiction, but sometimes it’s something else entirely. The thing without a name. In The Artist and Me, Shane Peacock imagines a child who is a neighbor to Vincent Van Gogh and, along with […]
[Quick note before today’s book: There is a giveaway of my book, Mountain Chef, today at “From the Mixed-Up Files.” Come on over and enter!] In Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-soaking Stream of Inventions, Chris Barton paints a portrait of the temperament of an inventor. We watch Lonnie Johnson from his childhood on up facing the problems of creating […]
Wild predators thrill kids. Have you ever checked out the library shelves about lions, tigers, and alligators? Usually there are scant pickings. But how often do we think about the predators that live among us? Coyote Moon is a beautiful exploration of urban wildlife. The book is organized around spare sentences using vivid language to […]