Why Narrative Nonfiction for Kids?
When I was in elementary school, the teachers emphasized reading fiction books, and I ate it all up, starting with the exploits of Dick and Jane and moving on to books like Johnny Tremain and Charlotte’s Web.
On the other hand, when my husband was a boy, he disdained the lady who wanted him to read about a mouse riding a motorcycle and instead chose to read nonfiction books about Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants, or an informational book called Fish Do the Strangest Things.
Back then, the teachers prized my kind of reading and tolerated my husband’s nonfiction. Today, the tables are turned.
The new Common Core State Standards for our nation’s schools emphasize reading nonfiction, especially narrative nonfiction, to develop student’s skills in understanding and analyzing informative texts.
What Is Narrative Nonfiction?
Most of us are familiar with what is called “expository nonfiction.” These are the texts that explain the Bill of Rights or describe the planets of the solar system.
But what, exactly, is narrative nonfiction? Simply put it’s a text that gets factual information across in a form that uses many of the elements of storytelling. An author of narrative nonfiction will typically introduce an actual character (perhaps a baseball player or a baby polar bear at the zoo), and narrate some sort of experience or journey that character has taken, all the while teaching kids a thing or two about history or zoology along the way.
By using a narrative structure (first this happened, then that, and that, and that), writers can relate nonfiction material using many of the techniques of the storyteller: characterization, dramatic tensions, foreshadowing, etc.
Narrative nonfiction provides kids with information--in a format that is interesting to them.