International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature

["626 Margaret Mallett Grandpa; Ifeoma Onyefulu\u2019s story Emeka\u2019s Gift (1995) shows through photographs the food, games and lifestyles of people in an African village. Travel books like S. Wheeler\u2019s Dear Daniel: Letters from Antarctica (1997) help young readers find a personal foothold in a terrain and a culture. History texts, particularly those which offer interesting material in the form of contem- porary documents, interviews, photographs of objects and paintings, help children learn how to use evidence and to distinguish between primary and secondary sources. These texts also aim to help develop a sense of chronology: timelines, and family trees help put actual events in the context of the \u2018bigger shapes\u2019 of history. For example, Nell Marshall\u2019s Letters to Henrietta (1998) shows how the \u2018big shapes\u2019 of war affect ordinary families and reminds us that the personal letter is an important primary source. Some of the more literary kinds of non-fiction \u2013 autobiography, biography and historical fiction \u2013 can help children begin to think and speculate like young historians. The best of these offer a care- fully constructed background as a context to learn about a particular life. Equally, books which teach history in a humorous way, such as the UK publisher A. and C. Black\u2019s Horrible Histories and Scholastic\u2019s Dead Famous series, are bestsellers, showing, that for some children humour and the subversive can be the way into thinking about history. Modern problems such as conservation, drug abuse, war and crime are now being tackled in children\u2019s novels. Fiction is a powerful medium, not least because of its capacity to \u2018distance\u2019 us from things that may be too sensitive to face head on. But information books for primary and secondary schools can also take on these issues successfully if they reinforce children\u2019s existing knowledge and introduce something new and interesting. A book is succeeding if children strive for a more than superficial knowledge and want to debate, for example, why rain forests are being cut down and why people abuse drugs. Some of these texts are termed \u2018discussion\u2019 or \u2018persuasive\u2019 texts because they model how to construct an argument and weigh evidence. Authors unafraid to take on the raw, the upsetting or the confusing are most likely to awaken passionate interest and concern. Non-book print and popular culture Children are introduced to an environment saturated by print from an early age \u2013 newspa- pers, letters, flyers and advertising material, print on food packets and notices and on street signs. Imaginative practitioners bring these into school to promote play, drama and projects to link school literacy with literacies at home, in the community and in the outside world. English work in the later primary and early secondary years has always drawn on a range of printed material to encourage discussion and children\u2019s writing. The choices chil- dren make about what they read in their leisure time, both fiction and non-fiction, also exist in a cultural context: gender, social class and community identity all make an impact. In many countries cultural and tourist organisations can supply booklets, exhibit annota- tions and interest sheets which support and link with first-hand experience. Information communication technology Media texts and digital technologies are part of our culture, and becoming able to read and create text using ever-developing electronic technology is part of becoming literate in an informational age. Multi-media programs differ from print sources in their dynamic use of sound, music and film. The moving image can show complex and detailed processes","Children\u2019s information texts 627 like the digestive system, the working of a car engine and speeded-up versions of a plant growing and an animal moving. So while a print version of a diagram, for example of the blood system, might use devices like arrows to show the direction in which the blood is flowing, the electronic medium allows the system to be shown in action. Concepts like the water cycle, migration and a volcano erupting can be brought to virtual reality. Two studies explore some of the implications of \u2018reading\u2019 visual images, including those on multi-modal systems. These are Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) and Image Matters (Callow 1999). The latter book presents the research of a number of Australian academics and teachers; a main theme is that we need to teach children to interpret and evaluate visual input from every medium. Information-handling software brings interesting ways of organising information when children create their own texts, and makes easier the creation of databases and spread- sheets. It also helps with practical problems of the storage of vast amounts of material. We need, however, to be as critical of software packages and CD-ROMs as we are of print resources. The Internet brings access to worldwide sites and provides exciting opportunities for children to develop areas of expertise and hobbies. It certainly has a part to play in extending children\u2019s visual literacy because of the quality images provided, not least stun- ning satellite weather maps and museums, wildlife parks and zoos. However, we need to keep two things in mind: information on sites is not monitored or edited and varies considerable in quality; the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming and chil- dren need considerable support when they use the internet. Pedagogical aspects We learn best when heart and head are engaged. (Arnold 1992: 133) At one time, the key to using information texts seemed to involve mainly the acquisition of library and study skills. Often these skills were taught out of context and the children were then expected to apply them. But the main impetus to wanting to find out is the young learners\u2019 interest and curiosity and their need to know (Arnold 1992; Meek 1996; Mallett 1999). This interest can be awakened and sustained by making learning collabora- tive. Paradoxically, while learning to read helps give children the means to learn independently, it is talking and sharing with the teacher and other children that helps energise their research, putting their questioning and thinking into top gear. At the begin- ning of a new topic, teachers help children organise their prior knowledge, which allows children to remain in control and to formulate their own questions to take to the secondary sources. It is children\u2019s questions which help them to truly engage with a text, entering actively into the author\u2019s discourse. But, particularly in the case of the under-tens, other experiences enhance and enrich learning from texts. These experiences may take the form of a visit \u2013 to a farm, museum or factory \u2013 or be linked with practical work like making a model, experimenting with science or cooking something. The skilled practitioner helps children integrate learning from such first-hand experiences and learning from secondary sources. This involves not only imagina- tive choosing of texts to extend children\u2019s learning, but also the judgement to bring texts in at just the right point. Progression in this kind of reading is partly to do with becoming able to read a greater variety of text books, magazines, posters, flyers, electronic texts and","628 Margaret Mallett the Internet. But we also want to support children\u2019s increasing capacity to read texts of greater profundity and complexity within each category. As children move onwards they need to encounter texts with different \u2018voices\u2019, some of them impersonal and to do with categorising, generalising and abstracting. But this comes later. Younger children benefit from hearing the teacher read out loud so they can hear the \u2018tune\u2019 of non-fiction writing (Barrs 1996\/7: ii). Through discussion they can be helped to link what they have learnt from different sources. The teacher can show how a specific bit of information fits with broader frameworks, hierarchies and insights. Where children have invested their feelings as well as their thinking in their learning it becomes much more than superficial. Five-year-olds learning about whales brought great passion to finding answers to their questions, not least to the question \u2018How can we stop the blue whale from becoming extinct?\u2019 They insisted that the teacher read to them from books intended for much older children. It is in this kind of context, when children are fully involved with the topic, that we can teach, for example, flexible reading. Sometimes we need to \u2018skim\u2019 through a text to find a date or name or \u2018scan\u2019 it to get the gist of a passage. \u2018Skimming \u2018 and \u2018scanning\u2019, swift kinds of reading, are often contrasted with critical and reflective kinds of reading which help us understand and eval- uate facts and ideas. What are the best ways of supporting children\u2019s non-fiction writing? Scholars and teachers in Australia, known as \u2018the genre theorists\u2019, argue that children need to be directly taught about the global structures of different texts. Only this, they consider, will help children control challenging non-fiction forms as writers. There has been some exciting cross-cultural debate; if you wish to read about the issues round this approach you might begin with Reid (1987). The Nuffield-funded Extending Literacy team, based at Exeter University in the UK, worked with teachers and children during the 1990s to find ways of helping children to organise the fruits of their research and their reflections on this research. Writing frames \u2013 sheets with headings and phrases \u2013 were designed to help children structure their written accounts in different informational genre (Wray and Lewis 1997). Children who find it difficult to know how to start their writing may find these frames helpful. But the Exeter team did not favour the direct teaching of genre features recommended by the Australian genre theorists. It is probably best for children to move quite swiftly to structuring their own accounts (Mallett 2003, and see also Britton 1970, Beireter and Scardamalia 1987; for working with the internet, see Selinger 2001). Publishers\u2019 perspectives I witnessed first hand while serving on the Youth Libraries Committee \u2026 the close links established with the Publishers\u2019 Association and individual publishers, some of whom asked to attend selection meetings in library authorities to gain insights into the reading habits of children. (Lonsdale 2001: 169) Children\u2019s information texts have long been an important strand in publishing in English- speaking countries. America has a history of strong texts in this category, with authors such as Jean Fritz (biography including Can\u2019t You Make Them Behave, King George?), Seymour Simon (science and zoological topics \u2013 on whales, sharks and wolves, for example) and Russell Freedman (social and historical themes) (see details in Harvey","Children\u2019s information texts 629 1998). This is also true of Australia and New Zealand, which, while having been tradi- tional markets for UK books, have growing reputations for their own information texts. Generally, today non-fiction publishing is \u2018driven by the market rather than the muse\u2019 (Unstead 2003: 4), with an eye to global distribution (although publishers are some- times motivated by conviction \u2013 the writers and artists of Lines in the Sand: New Writing on War and Peace (2003) and the publisher, Frances Lincoln, gave all profits and royal- ties to UNICEF\u2019s emergency appeal for the children of Iraq). Some topic books cover the same subjects again and again \u2013 putting new bright covers on the books, adopting modern computer-like format but with largely the same information. Not surprisingly many titles are produced for home markets directly to support statutory programmes, and there is everything to be gained from partnership between publishers, teachers and librarians. There is much demand for information books in Korea, Taiwan and increasingly in Japan, China, Malaysia and Thailand where parents often wish their children to learn English at an early age. The wish to sell into international markets can affect the scope and emphasis of the texts. This can have an enriching effect; for example, nature books will need to show flora and fauna of different parts of the world. However these new consider- ations may militate against the achievement of truly individual books. Three well-established traditions can also lead to texts lacking individuality. First, publishers have long produced books in series with a consistency of format, style and approach which can constrain the writer\u2019s originality and offer \u2018the facts\u2019 rather than ideas and information for debate. It is also true that busy practitioners may be tempted to order a whole series, from a catalogue perhaps, without considering the merits of each text. Second, some publishers are addicted to the double-spread format. The trouble with this is that sometimes the text has to be stretched out to fill the spread while on other occa- sions so much has to be crammed in that coherence is compromised. Third, authors these days are very often supported by marketers, designers, photographers, artists, computer experts and an array of consultants. This can make it much harder for a truly individual \u2018voice\u2019 to emerge, which might tempt us into the subject and sustain our interest. Some publishers have responded to this criticism and show that it is possible to produce series and yet avoid the procrustean discipline which makes books uniform (for example, Walkers Books\u2019 Read and Wonder series in the UK). Publishers also try to meet the challenge of ever-changing advances in technology and have, for quite some years now, been transferring information books to computerised form. New technology and new kinds of visual literacy mean that they need to find ways of capturing the interest of young readers who are perhaps the most visually aware genera- tion ever. They need to be responsive to new knowledge, new attitudes and new ways of presenting information. Crude and ethnocentric accounts, for example about explorers taking over territory, are now rare. But we always need to guard against distorting infor- mation, for example by omission. Children\u2019s books about other cultures can tend to give an over-simplified or idealised view of particular societies in a troubled world. The impressive technology of computer games and the satellite weather maps and news reports on television and film have brought about young people\u2019s high expectations of the way in which visual information is presented. Print books have benefited as much as elec- tronic texts, with ever more sophisticated and complex illustrations \u2013 although some information needs to be expressed verbally. We know that learning demands language and the visual needs mediation: drawings, photographs and diagrams are \u2018culture bound like other semiotic systems\u2019 (Meek 1996: 47).","630 Margaret Mallett The critical context What shines out from good criticism and judgement of information books is a distinctive kind of \u2018connoisseurship\u2019, a linking of knowledge and experience. (Meek 1996: 109) Each year some of the best non-fiction texts published do much more than what Peggy Heeks would call \u2018assembling and ordering facts\u2019 (Heeks 1970: 721). They awaken genuine interest and excitement in the young reader by linking with their interests and experience, and even the non-fiction strands in reading schemes and programmes, once such a target for reviewers, now often include books by fine authors like, for example, Meredith Hooper (Cambridge Reading). Information books are not reviewed widely, but there is a vast number of websites and journals (such as, in the UK, the Times Educational Supplement and The School Librarian). The reviewers may be children\u2019s librarians or academics, and they often find themselves on selection panels for non-fiction awards: for example, in the UK, the TES information book prize; in Australia the Children\u2019s Book Council \u2018Book of the Year\u2019 awards; in New Zealand the Library and Information Association Aotearoa non-fiction award; in the USA a non-fiction category was added to the Boston Globe\u2013Horn Book Awards in 1976. One of the first to give a critical appraisal of non-fiction texts, examining them in terms of their accuracy, readability, design and illustration, was Margery Fisher (1972). Fisher observes that, at the same time as imparting facts and ideas, information texts must encourage the reader to assess what they read \u2013 in other words, they need to encourage critical reading by giving help with the interpretation of facts. Writing as non-fiction editor for Books for Keeps, Eleanor von Schweinitz noted that successful books have a clear focus and good linkage between illustration and writing, making a text satisfying and coherent (von Schweinitz 1989). Certainly, writing a good information book for the young is as demanding as any other kind of writing. I keep three questions in mind when appraising a book. Does the author make insightful assumptions about potential readers\u2019 existing knowledge and experience? Is the young reader offered a helpful route into the book? Is the information offered in an imaginative and appropriate way? Some books are for children just starting on a topic and needing to be invited in, others are for those who have the foothold of a beginning expert. In appraising an author\u2019s work, we must take into account that the audience is likely to be multicultural and socially mixed, and that we want to interest both girls and boys. Reviewers should be dedicated to their task and to becoming, in Meek\u2019s term, \u2018connois- seurs\u2019 so that they contribute to a developing culture of appraising children\u2019s information books (Meek 1996: 109). Comment is needed on content, organisation and accuracy and on illustrations and retrieval devices \u2013 but above all on how the book appeals and interests. Who knows how long print texts will remain the main ones used for reading to learn? The signs are, though, that new technologies \u2013 bringing about new literacies beyond what we can now contemplate \u2013 will continue to complement and enrich rather than replace them. The presentation of some kinds of information \u2013 that on databases and spread- sheets, and some diagrams \u2013 will be computer-dominated. And teachers will bring new energy to help children \u2018read\u2019 images, both print and moving. Teacher educators will continue to modify their courses to do justice to all the new ways of presenting and organ- ising information. But I think the print text will survive because it offers a distinctive experience. Can a machine ever replace the feel of a hardback cover under the hand, the smell of the pages inside or the sheer aesthetic appeal of the best print illustrations?","Children\u2019s information texts 631 References Arnold, H. (1992) \u2018 \u201cDo the Blackbirds Sing All Day?\u201d Literature and Information Texts\u2019, in Styles, M., Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (eds) After Alice: Exploring Children\u2019s Literature, London: Cassell. Baker, C. D. and Freebody, P. (1989) Children\u2019s First School Books, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Barrs, M. (1996\/7) Editorial \u2018Information Texts\u2019, Language Matters 3: ii. Beireter, C. and Scardamalia, M. (1987) The Psychology of Written Composition, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Britton, J. N. (1970) Language and Learning, London: Allen Lane\/Penguin. Callow, J. (1999) Image Matters: Visual Texts in the Classroom, Marrickville, NSW: PETA (Primary English Teaching Association). Chambers, A. (2001) Reading Talk, Stroud: Thimble Press. Delahunty, A. (compiler) (2002) The Oxford First Thesaurus, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fisher, M. (1972) Matters of Fact, Leicester: Brockhampton Press. Harvey, S. (1998) Non-fiction Matters, York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Heeks, P. (1970) \u2018Getting at the Facts\u2019, Times Literary Supplement, 2 July: 721. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, London: Routledge. Littlefair, A. (1991) Reading All Types of Writing, Milton Keynes and Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Lonsdale, R. (2001) \u2018Editorial\u2019, The School Librarian 49, 4: 169. Mallett, M. (1999) Young Researchers: Informational Reading in the Early and Primary Years, London: Routledge. \u2014\u2014 (2003) Early Years Non-fiction London: Routledge. Meek, M. (1996) Information and Book Learning, Stroud: Thimble Press. Neate, B. (1992) Finding out about Finding out, Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton with UKRA. Nicholson, D. (1996\/7) \u2018Key Stage 2 Information Book Collection\u2019, Language Matters 3: 34\u20135. Pappas, C. (1986) \u2018Exploring the Global Structure of Children\u2019s Information Books\u2019, paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference, Austin, Texas. Reid, I. (ed.) (1987) The Place of Genre in Learning, Victoria: Deakin University. Selinger, S. (2001) \u2018Setting Authentic Tasks Using the Internet\u2019 in Leask, M. (ed.) Issues in Teaching and Using ICT, London: RoutledgeFalmer. Taylor, G. (2003) \u2018Don\u2019t Bin the Textbooks\u2019, Times Educational Supplement, 28 February: 23. Unstead, S. (2003) \u2018Non-fiction Publishing\u2019, Books for Keeps 139: 4\u20135. von Schweinitz, E. (1989) \u2018Facing the Facts\u2019, Books for Keeps 55: 4\u20138. Wray, D. and Lewis, M. (1997) Extending Literacy: Children Reading and Writing Non-fiction, London: Routledge."]