Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: What are you reading? - 4/5/17

April 5, 2017 Alyson Beecher

During March, I featured a series of books that celebrated strong women and their contributions to history. At the same time, I have been checking out a number of nonfiction titles from the library in an effort to catch up on books that I either missed from last year or from earlier this year. I still have a large stack that I am going through but I wanted to do a round-up post featuring some of the books I have been reading.

Here is what jumped out of the pile over the past couple of weeks...

Mickey Mantle: The Commerce Comet by Jonah Winter & C. F. Payne (Schwartz & Wade, February 2017) - I am always interested in finding new baseball biographies and discovered this recent release. I knew very little about Mantle and this provided a nice introduction to this well-known baseball legend.

You Never Heard of Casey Stengle?! by Jonah Winter; Illustrated by Barry Blitt (Schwartz & Wade, 2016) - When I was checking out the Mickey Mantle book, the librarian pulled this title and added it to my pile. I love when a librarian knows just what you will want to read. More fascinating baseball history between the pages of this book.

Whose Eye Am I? by Shelley Rotner (Holiday House, 2016) - A unique way of exploring how animals see. I found this fascinating.

Fancy Party Gowns: The Story of Ann Cole Lowe by Deborah Blumenthal; Illustrated by Laura Freeman (Little Bee Books, January 17, 2017) - Wish I had found this book soon enough to have featured it in last month's series of posts. A fascinating introduction to fashion designer, Ann Cole Lowe.

Otters Love to Play by Jonathan London; Illustrated by Meilo So (Candlewick Press, 2016) - An entertaining read as fun as the subject of the book.

The Deadliest Creature in the World by Brenda Z. Guiberson; Illustrated by Gennady Spirin (Henry Holt and Co., 2016) - I tend to be a fan of Guiberson's work and this is a nice companion to her earlier book, The Most Amazing Creature in the Sea.

Skateboards (Made By Hand #1) by Patricia Lakin (Aladdin, February 7, 2017) - Lakin explores a bit about the history of the skateboard and in particularly, one craftsman is creating his own skateboards by hand.

Bicycles (Made By Hand #2) by Patricia Lakin (Aladdin, February 7, 2017) - As part of the Made By Hand series, Lakin gives readers some history of the bicycle and more about a business owner, who makes custom bicycle frames.

A Beetle is Shy by Dianna Hutts Aston; Illustrated by Sylvia Long (Chronicle Books, 2016) - I love this series of books by Hutts Aston and can't believe that I missed this one last year. Just as beautiful and poetic as her other titles.

Prairie Dog Song: The Key to Saving North America's Grasslands by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore (Lee & Low, 2016) - Roth and Trumbore pack a lot of information into this picture book. It definitely requires a couple of read throughs. Readers can read the narrative story on one read and then return to learn about prairie dogs and the grasslands in the expository text. The end pages provide even more information.

The Polar Bear by Jenni Desmond (Enchanted Lion Books, 2016) - I had seen this book featured on a number of blogs back in the fall and glad to finally read it. At the beginning of the book, I was expecting more of a narrative story about polar bears, almost wondering if it was going to be a fiction text, but the writing quickly turns into an engaging expository text.

Look for these titles at your local indie bookstore or public library.

So, what are you reading?

Don't forget to link up your nonfiction reviews....

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: Girl Rising Changing the World One Girl at a Time

March 29, 2017 Alyson Beecher

Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time
by Tanya Lee Stone (Wendy Lamb Books, February 14, 2017)
Audience: Ages 14 and up
Nonfiction * Girls/Women * Social Issues
Indiebound | WorldCat

Description from GoodReads: A full-color book inspired by the documentary film Girl Rising about educating girls across the globe.

Worldwide, over 62 million girls are not in school.
But one girl with courage is a revolution.

Girl Rising, a global campaign for girls’ education, created a film that chronicled the stories of nine girls in the developing world, allowing viewers the opportunity to witness how education can break the cycle of poverty.

Now, award-winning author Tanya Lee Stone uses new research to illuminate the dramatic facts behind the film, focusing both on the girls captured on camera and many others. She examines barriers to education in depth—early child marriage and childbearing, slavery, sexual trafficking, gender discrimination, and poverty—and shows how removing these barriers means not only a better life for girls, but safer, healthier, and more prosperous communities.

Thoughts on the book:
As National Women's History Month comes to a close, I wanted the perfect book for this post. I couldn't find a more perfect book than Tanya Lee Stone's newest book, Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time. For those wondering, yes, the book is inspired by and expands on the documentary film, Girl Rising.

The book opens with an explanation from Stone on how the documentary inspired the book, and closes with an author's note that goes into depth about how she conveyed the information from each girls' videos interviews and field notes and the input from the female writers assigned to the girls to create the book. These notes added another layer to the book that I found insightful.

Stone divided the book into three sections: The Stakes, The Stories, and The Solutions. Of course, the stories are powerful and inspiring. Interspersed throughout the book are facts about education, trafficking victims, and child marriage. Readers will also will discover "The Power of Art" sneak peeks into the stories of the girls and the role of art in their lives.

Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time is definitely a book worth acquiring and reading and sharing. Look for a copy at your independent bookstore or public library.

Girl Rising Film Official Trailer:

Don't forget to link up your nonfiction reviews:

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: Martina & Chrissie: The Greatest Rivalry in the History of Sports

March 22, 2017 Alyson Beecher

Martina & Chrissie: The Greatest Rivalry in the History of Sports
by Phil Bildner; Illustrated by Brett Helquist (Candlewick Press, March 14, 2017)
Nonfiction * Women's Sports * Biographical
Audience: Grades 2 to 5
Indiebound | WorldCat

Description from GoodReads:
A fascinating dual biography of tennis greats Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert celebrates the power of equality, respect, and sportsmanship.

Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert come from completely different places and play tennis in completely different ways. Chrissie is the all-American girl: practiced, poised, with perfect technique. Martina hails from Czechoslovakia, a Communist country, and her game is ruled by emotion. Everything about them is different, except one thing: they both want to be the best. But as their intense rivalry grows, something else begins to swing into place, and a friendship forms that will outlast all their tennis victories. Phil Bildner and Brett Helquist tell the engaging true story of these two masters of the court as they win title after title and, most importantly, the hearts of the fans."

Thoughts on this book:
In August, I had the honor of revealing the cover for Martina & Chrissie and sharing some of author, Phil Bildner's thoughts on his latest book. You can check out the post here. It provides a fantastic author's note to the book.

In the 1970's, I was definitely not much of a tennis fan; however, even I knew who Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were. During tennis season, you couldn't turn on the news without hearing about one of both of these women. Yet, due to my lack of interest in tennis, I never really thought about these women as individuals or as possible friends. Chrissie & Martina opened my eyes to another side to these women. Instead of just seeing them as athletes, Bildner shares an element of their friendship, which settles readers into the story and keeps them engaged.

Bildner provides young readers with a solid introduction to Chrissie and Martina as both outstanding competitive athletes and also friends. It can be a challenge at times to have to key players as part of a picture book biography, but Bildner makes it work without leaning more towards one or the other. In addition to sharing with students about the lives and friendship of two talented athletes, Bildner includes a timeline, and some additional resources at the end of the book.

Check out the Educator's Guide here.

Look for a copy of the book at your local indie bookstore or public library.

Don't forget to link up your nonfiction reviews below... (Note: I am having an issue with Mr. Linky and have reached out to their tech support. Hopefully it will be cleared up soon.)

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: Guest Post by Author, Natasha Wing

March 15, 2017 Alyson Beecher

When Jackie Saved Grand Central: The True Story of Jacqueline Kennedy's
Fight for an American Icon
by Natasha Wing; Illustrated by Alexandra Boiger
HMH Books for Young Readers (March 7, 2017)
Audience: Ages 6 to 9
Nonfiction * Biography * Social Activist
Indiebound | WorldCat

Quick thoughts on the book: I learn so much from reading children's nonfiction and When Jackie Saved Grand Central introduced me to a side of Jacqueline Kennedy that I was unfamiliar with and also with a piece of history that I did not know about. Of course, reading it made me want to look up more information on both subjects of this book. Boiger's illustrations add an artistic element that drew me in and seemed to fit perfectly with the subject of the book. Look for a copy of the book at your local indie bookstore or community library.
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I am excited to welcome Natasha Wing to the blog during Women's History Month as she shares about her newest book When Jackie Saved Grand Central. Natasha shares with readers her writing process and the decisions she had to make during that process.
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From Natasha:
Writing narrative nonfiction is a tricky dance between storytelling and facts. You don’t want too many facts to step on the toes of the story and trip it up or slow it down. But you do want the right facts to lift readers to a higher level of learning about your topic while engaging them in an emotional journey.

In short, you want your story to read like fiction while teaching something.

This was especially challenging when writing my latest book, When Jackie Saved Grand Central: The True Story of Jacqueline Kennedy’s Fight for an American Icon since it contained a sophisticated subject – historic preservation – coupled with court cases, not typical topics young kids read about. So I had to keep the storytelling engaging, and make sure it wasn’t a boring fact dump of definitions and legalese.

When talking about historic preservation I used more kid-friendly ideas such as “Americans cared about their history.” And, the city wanted to “save its architecture,” before mentioning the term historic preservation. And even though there were many court cases, I used them to build momentum without giving too many details of what was being fought over in each case. For instance I streamlined the appeal process down to: New York City won the appeal, as well as another that followed…..But the fight wasn’t over. (tension) The railroad owners took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose ruling would be absolutely final.

Like any good fiction, narrative nonfiction uses these storytelling techniques: Set the tone, create voice, use poetic language and active verbs, find tension spots and aha moments, have your main character go on an emotional journey, make us care about the main character, include a kid-friendly theme, and resolve the story problem.

But what about facts? How do you decide what to keep in and what to cut out?

In doing my research I came across a number of buildings that Jackie had saved. At first I wanted to build the case that Jackie was passionate about old buildings by starting off the story showing all the buildings that she had saved. But too many examples would have bogged down the introduction to the one building that was central to the story, Grand Central. So I picked one – the White House – to use as my entry into Jackie’s theme of her love of buildings. (The other buildings ended up in the endnotes).

Then, in order to take the story from the past when she had restored the White House to the “present” I used a one-line transition: Fourteen years later, another famous landmark, this time in New York City, needed Jackie Kennedy’s help.

I also found a lot of newspaper articles about the lawsuits and the protests surrounding Grand Central’s potential demolishing. But there was one that motivated Jackie to join the city’s fight so I used it as a turning point in my story. Rather than including a block of text from the reporter’s article, I merely referred to it and only used one short quote. Here’s that section in the book: The New York Times ran a front-page story calling Grand Central “one of the most influential pieces of urban design of the twentieth century.” Jackie read this article and couldn’t believe what was happening.

Facts are wonderful in figuring out your story’s subject or character, but don’t become so enamored with them that you feel you must share everything you learned with your kid reader. This may sound odd when you’re writing nonfiction, but remember, too many facts can drag down the poetic flow of the text. Choose the facts that support your story and keep them kid-friendly.

About the author: Natasha Wing has been writing for 25 years and writes both fiction and narrative nonfiction. When Jackie Saved Grand Central published by HMH Books for Young Readers (March 7, 2017) has received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. Find out more at www.natashawing.com

Don't forget to link up your nonfiction reviews...

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge: International Women's Day #BeBoldForChange

March 8, 2017 Alyson Beecher

It is National Women's History Month and today is International Women's Day. I had to continue with a post about more women.

#NF10for10 Women Who Nevertheless Persisted | National Women's History

Two years ago, I did a guest post for the KidLit Celebrates Women's History Month blog. The title of the post was Women Who Faced Amazing Challenges and Succeeded. In the post, I celebrated women with special needs who despite their challenges and what some would say limitations, they succeeded. When I did this post, I realized that there were woman that I knew nothing about and they had made significant contributions in their own way.

Many women have not been recognized for the work that they have done. Many women in the math and science fields were never taken seriously for their work or only found valuable until there was a man to step in and do the work. Today, I honor women who have contributed to the field of math and early computer programming.

Hidden Figures (Young Reader's Edition) by Margot Lee Shetterly (HarperCollins, November 29, 2016) - Many people have watched the movie HIDDEN FIGURES, but have you read the book?

Women Who Launched the Computer Age by Laurie Calkhoven; Illustrated by Alyssa Petersen (Simon Spotlight, 2016) - When I read this book, I was saddened by the fact that once the men returned from the war these and other fabulous women were forced out of jobs. And yet the work they have done was so significant.

Ada Lovelace: Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer by Diane Stanley; Illustrated Jessie Hartland (Simon & Schuster, February 2016) And back in the 1800's, Ada Lovelace was making the first gains on computer programming without even knowing what a computer was