Making Series Nonfiction a Must-Read

Gather a group of librarians and ask them what they’re reading for fun. My experience shows that 90 per cent of the answers will be fiction titles. Does this show that school librarians view fiction as fun, while seeing nonfiction titles as simply for curricular support? Are librarians overly concerned with stories instead of with the act of reading to accumulate knowledge and facts?

Librarians read many fiction titles to prepare for booktalks, so that they can encourage students to read more broadly, and to maintain familiarity with their collections. Yet when school librarians are ordering nonfiction, they often fill holes in their curriculum collections without considering whether the new material will be appropriate for recreational reading. If librarians don’t read nonfiction for fun, they can’t support those who do. And it’s time to recognize that reading nonfiction is a skill that we should encourage our students to practice.

The “meat and potatoes” of the nonfiction publishing industry is series nonfiction. This genre often features design elements such as “Did you know?” boxes and other sidebars, time lines, and charts. When students master how to navigate one title in a set, they carry over those skills to the rest of the set and build on their framework for learning. Becoming accustomed to using prior experience to add to a knowledge base is a valuable reading, and life, skill.

Encourage students to read nonfiction series using the following easy tips.

Purchase an entire series instead of a book here and there.

Heinemann-Raintree’s “True Stories,” for example, will expand students’ reading through exploration of diverse topics such as salt, gold, cotton, oil, gravity, skyscrapers, chocolate, bread, electricity, toilets, and diamonds. Some of those topics may support curricular areas, but, in my library, the most popular title in the set has been The Story Behind Toilets.

Create bookmarks with check-off boxes for series titles.

That way, children can keep track of what they’ve read and friends can compare books they’ve enjoyed. In series that include diverse topics, many of the books aren’t shelved together, so the bookmarks should include the call numbers of titles to help students locate every book in the set.

Teach students how to search by series name and publisher.

Students need instruction in advanced OPAC searching, and you might need a refresher on some of your system’s lesser-used features yourself. How easily can you generate a list of all the sports books you own by The Creative Company? Or a list of all your nonfiction series in graphic-novel format? Have you taught your students these skills?

Keep publishers’ catalogs with lists of other series at the circulation desk for reader’s guidance.

Ask your students what they enjoyed about a nonfiction title so you can develop your collection by reading style, presentation, reading level, topic, or publisher.

Know your nonfiction sets.

Offer suggestions to expand reading to other topics. Norwood’s “Team Spirit” series is a popular set that has subgroups by sports. Once a student has read all the professional football titles, offer them college football titles, and then introduce them to the books on other sports or share biographies of players mentioned in the set.

Display new nonfiction titles along with fiction titles.

Integrate your displays to catch new readers and expand their interests. Display fiction titles like Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Holiday House, 2009) with Rosen’s “Your Carbon Footprint” series, which discusses how to reduce the environmental impact of cooking, working, shopping, and traveling.

Celebrate success and accomplishments in finishing series.

Find out who has read the Weekly Reader subseries “Animals That Live in the Rainforest.” Have they also read the publisher’s other biome sets? Recognize this and celebrate with them. For example, one year I worked with students reading below grade level. I challenged them to read a 96-book series. Those who finished were invited to a special breakfast and were recognized by their peers for their diligence. If I hadn’t challenged them to read the entire set, they might have read four or five titles from it. By meeting this goal, they expanded their knowledge and their vocabulary. They were successful and their achievements were applauded.

Do you value nonfiction reading? Take a moment to curl up with a nonfiction book this week, and then spread the love.