You may wonder why fifty of
today’s leading children’s nonfiction authors have come together to write a
book for educators. After all, our target audience is usually young readers.
It’s because we want to set the
record straight. We want to shine a light on a critical part of the nonfiction
writing process that often goes unseen and unappreciated.
Again and again, we encounter teachers and students who seem to think that writing nonfiction is
simple and straightforward. Just do some research and then cobble together a
bunch of facts. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Nonfiction
Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of
Engaging Writing features essays by fifty authors, each with
their own story, but all with the same message: To craft high-quality prose,
nonfiction writers have to dig deep.
We have to be personally invested.
We have to get
in touch with our passions and
our vulnerabilities and use them
to fuel our work.
The topics we choose, the approaches we take, and the concepts and themes we explore are
closely linked to who we are as people—our
personalities, our beliefs, and our experiences in the world. As far as
we’re concerned, putting the information we collect through our own personal filters and making our own meaning is the secret to creating engaging nonfiction.
We created Nonfiction
Writers Dig Deep because
we want to revolutionize the way nonfiction writing is taught across the
country and around the world. We firmly believe that once K-12
writing teachers realize what they’re currently leaving out of their instruction,
they will be eager to make changes.
The tips, tools, strategies,
and activities included in Nonfiction
Writers Dig Deep can provide guidance as educators
search for ways to help students become more personally invested in their
nonfiction writing. Our fondest hope is that, from an early age, children will
understand that to create nonfiction that delights as well as informs, writers need
to have skin in the game.
100 percent
of the proceeds from Nonfiction Writers Dig
Deep will be divided among the National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE), We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), and the Society of Children’s Book
Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).
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