This week I submitted a paper to my professor about adults who read children's nonfiction. Instead of posting the entire paper here, I will share a few pertinent paragraphs.
From the introduction:
A few days after the recent devastating earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey, a patron, who appeared to be in his 60s, approached the main desk at my library. "Do you have any books about earthquakes?" he asked. I told him that we did, and not only that, another staff member and I were just reviewing the Wikipedia article regarding the science and types of earthquakes since we were also discussing that recent event. The patron then lowered his voice, and with a prominent touch of sadness, said: "They are still pulling people out of the rubble."
I quickly looked at my library's catalogue and mentioned that, while we did not have books specifically about earthquakes for adults, we did have books about that topic in our children's section. The patron mentioned that was fine; he said he only wanted basic information, especially since he was not well-versed in earthquake science. When I escorted him to the children's section and pointed out all of the books we had about earthquakes and other various tectonic movements, he took each book we had.
From the meat of the article:
In an article by the artist and writer, Austin Kleon (of Steal Like an Artist fame), Kleon even touted the benefits of reading books targeted for a younger demographic by sharing a picture of all of the children's nonfiction books he recently checked out from his local library - a towering stack of astronomy books (Kleon, 2019). Kleon then highlighted a quote from Jeopardy! winner, James Holzhauer, who stated: "I was thinking, what is the place in the library I can go to to get books tailored to make things interesting for uninterested readers? Boom. The children's section" (Kleon, 2019).
Have you ever explored children's nonfiction? If so, what have been your experiences with it?
No comments:
Post a Comment