Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-259) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : the literary study of children's nonfiction -- Beyond authority : questioning the literature of facts -- Voice and the seamless narrative of knowledge -- Nonfiction's unfinished characters : the people who are wrong, flawed, and incomplete -- Inquiry at and in the margins : how peritexts encourage critical reading -- Seeing photographs : breaking the authority of nonfiction's favorite medium -- The pursuit of reliability in Almost astronauts -- The empathy of critical engagement : emotion and sentimentality in children's nonfiction -- Conclusion : critical engagement's moral imperative.
Summary:
In A Literature of Questions, Joe Sutliff Sanders offers an innovative 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 writing is either vulnerable or resistant to critical engagement, Sander pays attention to the attributes that nonfiction shares with other forms of literature, including voice and character, as well as special features of the genre, such as peritexts and photography. The first book to theorize children's nonfiction from a literary perspective, Sanders reveals how nonfiction can make young readers active learners rather than passive recipients of information. -- from back cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.