Search

A debate over whether children's nonfiction should "speculate" was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children's nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres of children's nonfiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres of children’s nonfiction.

A recent surge of conversation about children's nonfiction reveals a conflict between two positions that do not at first appear to be opposed: modeling inquiry and presenting authoritative facts. Tanya Lee Stone, the author of the Sibert Award-winning Almost Astronauts (2009), has recently alluded to that tension and expressed a preference for nonfiction that is reliable. This essay takes Almost Astronauts as a test case, focusing especially on how it portrays its original research and its two key characters: Jerrie Cobb and Jackie Cochran. The essay uses these examples to argue that in pursuing reliability, Almost Astronauts suppresses complexity and opportunities to model inquiry, thereby sacrificing both critical engagement and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]