A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

by Joe Sutliff Sanders

Overview

Nonfiction books for children—from biographies and historical accounts of communities and events to works on science and social justice—have traditionally been most highly valued by educators and parents for their factual accuracy. This approach, however, misses an opportunity for young readers to participate in the generation and testing of information. 

In A Literature of Questions, Joe Sutliff Sanders offers an innovative theoretical approach to children’s nonfiction that goes beyond an assessment of a work’s veracity to develop a book’s equivocation as a basis for interpretation. Addressing how such works are either vulnerable or resistant to critical engagement, Sanders pays special attention to the attributes that nonfiction shares with other forms of literature, including voice and character, and those that play a special role in the genre, such as peritexts and photography. 

The first book-length work to theorize children’s nonfiction as nonfiction from a literary perspective, A Literature of Questions carefully explains how the genre speaks in unique ways to its young readers and how it invites them to the project of understanding. At the same time, it clearly lays out a series of techniques for analysis, which it then applies and nuances through extensive close readings and case studies of books published over the past half century, including recent award-winning books such as Tanya Lee Stone’s Almost Astronauts: Thirteen Women Who Dared to Dream and We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. By looking at a text’s willingness or reluctance to let children interrogate its information and ideological context, Sanders reveals how nonfiction can make young readers part of the project of learning rather than passive recipients of information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517903008
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	01/01/2018
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Joe Sutliff Sanders is professor of English at Kansas State University. He is author of Disciplining Girls: Understanding the Origins of the Classic Orphan Girl Story and editor of The Comics of Hergé: When the Lines Are Not So Clear.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: The Literary Study of Children’s Nonfiction

1. Beyond Authority: Questioning the Literature of Facts 

2. Voice and the Seamless Narrative of Knowledge

3. Nonfiction’s Unfinished Characters: The People Who Are Wrong, Flawed, and Incomplete

4. Inquiry at and in the Margins: How Peritexts Encourage Critical Reading

5. Seeing Photographs: Breaking the Authority of Nonfiction’s Favorite Medium

6. The Pursuit of Reliability in Almost Astronauts

7. The Empathy of Critical Engagement: Emotion and Sentimentality in Children’s Nonfiction

Conclusion: Critical Engagement’s Moral Imperative

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"A Literature of Questions is a groundbreaking work of criticism not only because it covers an area of children's literature that is largely unexamined but also because it provides the field with new language and a new set of critical lenses, which scholars, educators, and writers can use in the future to analyze, evaluate, teach, and create works of nonfiction for younger readers."—Annette Wannamaker, Eastern Michigan University

"Not many courses about children’s literature that are offered in English departments include nonfiction titles on the reading lists. A Literature of Questions will irrevocably change this situation. In the wake of Joe Sutliff Sanders’s book, it will no longer be possible to teach an undergraduate or graduate course about literature for young readers without including a section on children’s nonfiction. Every individual working in the field will want to add a copy of A Literature of Questions to their campus library and even to their personal book collection. Additionally, they will want to assign this text their students. Sanders’s work is a new classic."—Michelle Ann Abate, author of Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children’s Literature

"A welcome addition for school librarians eager to provide upper elementary, middle, or high school students with tools for evaluating the intricacies of nonfiction."—Library Journal

"Sanders offers a literary analysis of informational children’s books. The well-researched and insightful book is required reading for those interested in children’s literature." —CHOICE

From the Publisher

07/01/2018
This strong work supports Sanders's view that students are capable of understanding and benefiting from nuanced nonfiction that encourages dialogue with the text. He discusses many contemporary and older works of nonfiction to show how they do or do not engage readers, promote imagination and curiosity, and encourage readers to form their own conclusions. Sanders examines literary devices such as voice, characterization, empathy, and sentiment. The author also lists many examples of peritexts and demonstrates how they potentially enhance children's understanding. Extensive chapter notes and the bibliography attest to Sanders's thorough research. VERDICT A welcome addition for school librarians eager to provide upper elementary, middle, or high school students with tools for evaluating the intricacies of nonfiction.—Jackie Gropman, formerly at Chantilly Regional Library, VA

School Library Journal