Beyond Derring-Do and Danger: Booktalking Nonfiction
Alicia Eames, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 10/11/2007
Have you ever noticed how classes visiting the school library in elementary and middle school often divide by gender? The girls gravitate to fiction, while the boys pore over books about space, snakes, wrestling, and pretty much anything that hints of derring-do or danger. While stereotyping has its obvious pitfalls, and there are boys and girls who read everything, the differences are worth considering.
Interviewed by Roger Sutton in the September/October 2007 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, Jon Scieska (www.guysread.com) speaks thoughtfully about this topic and suggests there’s “a different way boys experience books, and part of why they enjoy nonfiction, certainly. There’s something about boys amassing expertise…whether it’s about all the dinosaurs in the world or every kind of truck that there is on the planet.”
Coincidentally, in the introduction to Kathleen A. Baxter and Marcia Agness Kochel’s Gotcha for Guys! Nonfiction Books to Get Boys Excited about Reading(Libraries Unlimited, 2006), Baxter writes, “The teaching and library professions are dominated by women. We choose what to purchase for our collection, and we choose what to display and recommend. We have our standards, and frequently our standards bear little relation to what most boys want to read.”
Gotcha for Guys! and Gotcha Covered! More Nonfiction Booktalks to Get Kids Excited about Reading (Libraries Unlimited, 2005) by Baxter and Michael Dahl offer lists of titles with guaranteed kid appeal in addition to some of the best booktalks and tips available. Grouped by topics such as “All Things Gross,” “Disasters and Unsolved Mysteries,” “Dreamers, Flyers, and Inventors,” the books have been handpicked for merit, and both collections are reliably rich resources for adding pizzazz to nonfiction shelves.
So, perhaps the next time we’re displaying the latest arrivals, getting ready for a booktalk or a class visit, we’ll head for the nonfiction first.
For titles on booktalking for teens see last month’s “Professional Shelf” column.
