Ask a Book Question: #71 (Non-Fiction for Kids)

Betsy recently wrote in with this question:

I'm looking for some good non-fiction titles about "People and Places That Interest Us" for a 7th grade reading unit at my school. I plan to introduce Three Cups of Tea and Chasing Lincoln's Killer. Do you have any other recommendations for page turners that 13 year olds would enjoy? My students are, by and large, strong readers. I usually book talk about 6 or 7 titles each month.

Garth writes: Most of us at The Millions are passionate amateurs, rather than experts. However, we boast an asset many experts don't: the collective wisdom of you, our audience. We weren't sure we were qualified to answer this Book Question on our own, so we turned to Cynthia Oakes, a middle school librarian at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a Millions reader, and (not incidentally) my mother-in-law. You may remember her from our 2007 Harry Potter interview. Here are the titles she suggested, "off the top of her head":

• Rocket Boys: A Memoir by Homer Hickam
• Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
• Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman (and really, anything by him...)
Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji Li Jiang
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
• Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference by Joanne Oppenhein (Well, of course I'd include this!)
• The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
• Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn by Larry Colton
• Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold by Michael Benavev

If you have any suggestions, let us know in the comments. Thanks for the question Betsy and thanks for the help Cynthia!

- Editor @ 6:16 AM ~ comments: 4 ~

A Year in Reading 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
Visit The Millions Book Review Index

Comments:

Hear Me Now by Sophal Leng Stagg could be a good choice about the Khymer Rouge.
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham - by a young Vietnamese American about his travel through Vietnam by bicycle, trying to revisit his origins and better understand his identity. A friend used this with her junior high class with good results.
I just finished Little Heathens, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, about her life growing up in Iowa during the Depression. She and her sister and brothers spent half the year on a farm in the country and half a year in town with their grandparents. It was terrific - a real sense of time and place.
`A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became Histories Greatest Traveller` - kids love this one, 19th C gentleman with disability overcomes and becomes the best in the world.

`Catfish and Mandala` might too adult for 7th grade, contains some dark material. His second book `The Eaves of Heaven` would be good, and a better book IMO, but also has some dark material.

Second recommendation of `Little Heathens` and add `A Life of Her Own`, sort of the same but France instead of Iowa.

Replace Caroline Alexander's `The Endurance` with Alfred Lansing `Endurance`, the original and still best classic account, and much easier to read for kids. One of the best books I've ever read, and not just for the story - narrative force is unmatched, unputdownable.

`Seven Years in Tibet` is a classic, better than the movie of course.

`The Silent World` by Jacque Cousteau is a great adventure, still, and with pictures and not too long.

`Sailing Alone Around the World` by Joshua Slocum, classic account of first solo round the world trip.

`Two Years Before the Mast`, Dana, American classic.

`The Oregon Trail`, Francis Parkman, American classic.

Wow so many more..

Post a Comment

Please Note:

1. Comments with unrelated links will be deleted. If you'd like to reach our readers, consider buying an advertisement instead.
2. Anonymous and pseudonymous comments that do not add to the conversation will be deleted at our discretion.