from the author at the back of the book seem to be a type of documentation that is aimed at both child and adult readers. Jim Murphy is known for his lively accounts of historical events that are pulled together from multiple firsthand accounts. The notes about his sources in An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 provide readers with additional information about the varied perspectives of his sources. Writing about one of his sources, J. Henry Helmuth’s A Short Account of the Yellow Fever inPhiladelphia: For the Reflecting Christian (1794), Murphy states: “His aim was to convince readers that the fever was a warning from God for the sins of the entire community. One way he attempted to do this was by writing detailed ‘you are there’ scenes of the devastation.” Murphy’s notes are as entertaining as they are enlightening, and they help readers understand the context in which the accounts were written.
Many critics of children’s nonfiction feel quite strongly about the documentation of sources, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any clear consensus as to what level and type of documentation should be used. There is more agreement among adults about why information should be documented than how authors should do it, and the most common reason given is for the benefit of child readers. As Sandip Wilson points out in her excellent article “Getting Down to the Facts in Children’s Nonfiction Literature: A Case for the Importance of Sources,” sources go beyond answering the basic question of “How does the author know that?” to showing children the important conventions of nonfiction literature.
Both these roles can be seen in the exemplary notes provided by Scott Reynolds Nelson and Marc Aronson in their book Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry . In addition to notes about sources and an annotated bibliography suggesting further readings, Marc Aronson has provided a short essay called “How to Be a Historian” that outlines six steps, using examples from Nelson’s John Henry research to illustrate his points. This directly engages young readers in the actual research methodology used by historians, as it tells them something about how Nelson gathered his historical evidence.
While the documentation of sources is clearly an important factor in evaluating nonfiction, the success of a book should not rise or fall based solely on its citations or lack thereof. Of all the factors I havedescribed that make up a nonfiction book, documentation is clearly the easiest to assess: Either it’s there or it isn’t. For this reason, I suspect that some critics who are willing to write off a book due only to a lack of documentation are opting for the easy way out. They are disregarding some of the more challenging questions: What is the author’s authority? How is the material organized? Does the design clarify the sequence of ideas? Do the illustrations extend the text? What sort of writing style does the author use? The answers to all these questions and more ultimately add up to the success or failure of a book of information. We at least owe it to our audience of readers to consider them all as we evaluate nonfiction.
CHAPTER 3
Traditional Literature
Traditional literature is a general term that applies to myths, epics, legends, tall tales, fables, and folktales that originated in oral storytelling and have been passed down from one generation to the next. The original authors of these tales are unknown, although today the stories themselves have sometimes come to be associated with the name of the person who first collected the oral version and wrote it down. Thus, much of the folk literature of Europe, for example, is attributed to the Brothers Grimm, who were among the first scholars to record the tales as ordinary people told them in the early nineteenth century.
The act of collecting oral stories for the purposes of recording
Many critics of children’s nonfiction feel quite strongly about the documentation of sources, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any clear consensus as to what level and type of documentation should be used. There is more agreement among adults about why information should be documented than how authors should do it, and the most common reason given is for the benefit of child readers. As Sandip Wilson points out in her excellent article “Getting Down to the Facts in Children’s Nonfiction Literature: A Case for the Importance of Sources,” sources go beyond answering the basic question of “How does the author know that?” to showing children the important conventions of nonfiction literature.
Both these roles can be seen in the exemplary notes provided by Scott Reynolds Nelson and Marc Aronson in their book Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry . In addition to notes about sources and an annotated bibliography suggesting further readings, Marc Aronson has provided a short essay called “How to Be a Historian” that outlines six steps, using examples from Nelson’s John Henry research to illustrate his points. This directly engages young readers in the actual research methodology used by historians, as it tells them something about how Nelson gathered his historical evidence.
While the documentation of sources is clearly an important factor in evaluating nonfiction, the success of a book should not rise or fall based solely on its citations or lack thereof. Of all the factors I havedescribed that make up a nonfiction book, documentation is clearly the easiest to assess: Either it’s there or it isn’t. For this reason, I suspect that some critics who are willing to write off a book due only to a lack of documentation are opting for the easy way out. They are disregarding some of the more challenging questions: What is the author’s authority? How is the material organized? Does the design clarify the sequence of ideas? Do the illustrations extend the text? What sort of writing style does the author use? The answers to all these questions and more ultimately add up to the success or failure of a book of information. We at least owe it to our audience of readers to consider them all as we evaluate nonfiction.
CHAPTER 3
Traditional Literature
Traditional literature is a general term that applies to myths, epics, legends, tall tales, fables, and folktales that originated in oral storytelling and have been passed down from one generation to the next. The original authors of these tales are unknown, although today the stories themselves have sometimes come to be associated with the name of the person who first collected the oral version and wrote it down. Thus, much of the folk literature of Europe, for example, is attributed to the Brothers Grimm, who were among the first scholars to record the tales as ordinary people told them in the early nineteenth century.
The act of collecting oral stories for the purposes of recording
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