On December 11, 2020, the article “Will My Grandkids Still Love Me If I Buy Them Nonfiction?” by
Jay Mathews appeared in the Washington
Post. Author Cynthia Levinson posted it on the NF Fest Facebook
forum, sparking a lively discussion.
When Cynthia returned to the conversation a few
hours later, she wrote, “I posted this in the hopes that we could respond.
Anyone interested?” Jen Swanson and I jumped at the opportunity.
First, we drafted a letter to the editor of the Washington Post (which was never published). Then we queried Publisher
Weekly to see if they’d be interested in publishing a response. They said
“Yes,” and we got to work.
When our article “Hey, Grownups! Kids Really Do Like Nonfiction,” appeared in PW on January 7, 2021, it
received a terrific response. In fact, the Washington Post ended up reprinting the article on January 26, 2021.
Laura Backes of the Children’s Book Insider invited us to discuss the article and all things nonfiction on the CBI Kidlit Distancing
Social on February 2, 2021. Lionel Bender, Editorial Director of the
UK-based book packager Bender Richardson White saw the program and contacted us to share his perspective “as a
producer of children’s illustrated nonfiction for more than 40 years and as a person
who has always had a strong preference for nonfiction.” Here’s what he had to
say.
I
believe that everyone involved in buying books for children should focus more
attention on nonfiction. The impact these books have on children’s lives is
tremendous. Here
are some points I’d like the U.S. children’s literature community to consider.
Many Children Prefer
Nonfiction to Fiction
Research
shows that many children prefer nonfiction. Others enjoy fiction and nonfiction
equally. Their reading choices are influenced by what is available to them, their age, what
they are given and by whom, how attractive the books look, what interests them,
and what is in fashion or “cool.”
The
Top-20 lists that Mathews cites in his Washington Post article indicate readership
or sales of individual titles. In those comparisons, fiction will always win because
these titles are more heavily pushed by book outlets and more widely covered by
reviewers, increasing their sales. Note that in national book award and prize
competitions where children vote, nonfiction titles often win.
The
Growing Popularity of Nonfiction Books
In the
past two decades, children’s interests have changed significantly to the extent
that they prefer and choose nonfiction more than ever before. Figures from Publishers Weekly and Nielsen BookScan show the sales of
children’s nonfiction print books have been growing constantly and
significantly for several years.
Print
and digital books are completely different sensory experiences and educational
tools, particularly for children and for very visual books. Most children’s
nonfiction books are highly visual. Sales and readership of children’s print
nonfiction will continue to increase as illustrators, designers, and publishers
experiment more with artwork and new layouts and formats.
Today,
children are surrounded by and bombarded with a continuous feed of information,
making them more aware and interested in the world around them than ever
before. They seek out nonfiction books to help them understand topics of
interest, deal with issues that affect them, and contribute to the outside world.
Children’s
nonfiction books now deal with “hot” topics previously covered only by young
adult and grown-ups’ magazines, such as health and hygiene, food and cooking,
fashion, gender issues, race, religion, environment, government, and politics.
Children
Need Better Access to Nonfiction Books
Teachers,
librarians, and parents
have to work hard to find and explore the wealth of children’s nonfiction books
available. The publishing industry should improve the supply chain to ensure
all retail outlets can stock and better display and promote nonfiction.
Most
bookstores do not have sufficiently large purchasing power to buy direct from
publishers. They have to buy from wholesalers, which favor the fiction titles
they think will sell quickly and not get stuck on warehouse shelves. Without an
enticing range of nonfiction choices, many parents and grandparents will default
to purchasing fiction for the children in their lives.
In
schools, library and classroom book collections are fiction-heavy and the range
of nonfiction books is limited. The increasing use of and reliance on digital
books and online learning are probably major contributors to this.
Nonfiction
books are invariably highly illustrated, making their purchase prices far
higher than fiction. As a result, teachers and school librarians are very
selective about nonfiction titles they buy. That means a good percentage of the
printed nonfiction books in school library are dated and, therefore,
unattractive to children.
Many
schools purchase books based on guidance from state education departments and book
distributors that filter out nonfiction titles on the basis of their science,
gender, race, religion, or ethnicity content.
Trade
and mass-market nonfiction books are often excluded from schools because they
are not easily used as educational tools in classrooms. (Trade and mass-market
publishers could probably do more to help here.)
Lionel Bender is the Editorial Director of book packager Bender
Richardson White (BRW). He has edited more than 1,400 children’s illustrated nonfiction
books and classroom materials for 35 different publishers in the UK and USA and
written 72 children’s nonfiction books.
Lionel was the founder and co-organizer of the 21st Century
Children’s Nonfiction Conference, held in the U.S. from 2013 to 2016. He has
been on the Faculty at SCBWI Regional Conferences and at the Highlights
Foundation.
Writers,
illustrators, and editors interested in opportunities in children’s nonfiction
may wish to register for Lionel’s Children’s Book Insider webinars Writing Nonfiction for
the School Library Market and The Children’s
Nonfiction Market: How to Break In, How to Succeed.