Let’s hear it for children’s non-fiction

Getty Images Entertainment

If you are a writer of non-fiction for children and young people you have just a month to submit your opus magnum, or at least your most recent book, for a chance to win the £2,000 prize – the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) Award for Educational Writing.

Administered by Society of Authors, the prize is for an outstanding example of traditionally published non-fiction that stimulates and enhances learning. It alternates from year to year between the primary and secondary age range. The 2012 prize is for a book aimed at 12-16 year olds.

Five years ago I was chair of the Society of Authors’ Education Writers’ Group whose idea this was. In fact we’d been trying to get it off the ground for some time. Then the ALCS agreed to sponsor the prize and it took off.

So why were we so keen to raise the profile of non-fiction for children? Because it’s a Cinderella genre. Almost everything you read about children’s reading focuses on fiction. Even The School Librarian – the quarterly School Library Association Journal for which I’m a regular reviewer – devotes only a small section to non-fiction.

Many books for children are bought by someone the publishers call ‘Graunty’ –  a composite of grandparents, aunties and other relations who give children books at Christmas and on birthdays. Books have to appeal to her or she won’t buy them. Does she buy non-fiction? No, not often. So that’s another de-motivating factor for publishers compiling lists.

Of course there are plenty of factual books in school classrooms which painstakingly spell out everything to do with science, history, geography and so on as required by the National Curriculum. But what about non-fiction books which are so exciting and interesting that the young reader grabs them and devours them for pleasure – as I, for example, remember doing aged about 10 with suitable biographies of ever-fascinating ‘heroines’ such as Marie Curie and Elizabeth Fry? I was also in love with the romance of Easter Island and would read anything about it I could lay my hands on. Boys often gravitate to books about dinosaurs or football.

Even way we designate this genre is absurd and unhelpful, When Stewart Ross took the 2011 prize for his lovely book Moon: Apollo 11 and beyond – a gloriously eclectic mix of science, history, literature, music, folklore and religion published by the Oxford University Press – he observed at the awards ceremony  that it is very odd to define something by what it is not: “non” fiction. And of course he’s right. But it’s hard to come up with an acceptable alternative.

‘Educational writing’ is, arguably, even worse because it sounds off-puttingly, almost perjoratively, good for you rather than something you’re meant to enjoy. One can sympathise a bit with Terry ‘Horrible Histories’ Deary, one of the few non-fiction writers for children whose books sell by the million – with help from other media such as TV, DVDs, stage shows and merchandising. He recently told The London Evening Standard, cultivating his usual deliberate outrageousness, that he’d like to sue any school that uses his books in class.

I doubt that he’ll stop it though: I’ve reviewed all the ‘Horrible Histories’ shows in The Stage, including the current performance of The Barmy Britons, and I’ve never yet been to one of these shows without there being several school parties in the audience.

Children certainly enjoy the ‘Horrible Histories’ style. But is it the case that, as a group of academics, including Cambridge’s David Abulafia (who came up with a somewhat contentious list of must-know historical milestones for children) alleged last week that, in Deary’s books, history is trivialised to such an extent that it’s distorted?

Actually every ‘Horrible Histories’ book packs a lot of facts in its jokey and irreverent way. For instance, I came away from the Barmy Britons show disturbed to have learned that a total of 50,000 people – yes, 50,000 – were executed at Tyburn, now the site of Marble Arch.

I’m not sure, though, that we need to go entirely down the ‘Horrible Histories’ route, although there’s obviously a place for it.  I’d like to see many more whimsical, imaginative and engaging books for children – like Stewart Ross’s Moon – occupying the centre stage alongside fiction books.

Not every child likes fiction. My father, an enthusiastic consumer of factual books of all sorts, swore he’d never read a fiction book since outgrowing the teachers who’d forced him to it. We should be leading children like him to books which tell real life ‘stories’ of all sorts.

The ALCS Society of Authors Award raises a bit of awareness and is a good start. But it’s time to take Cinderella to a much bigger ball. Publishers, writers and ‘graunties’ please take note.

Recent Posts on Notebook

• Justice for sale but who pays for the cost?
• The Road to the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc - Majorca 70.3 Ironman
• The Retail Ready People project means the future of the high street is in your hands
• Don't get mad about Amazon and make the right ethical choice
• Chagos: Conservationists are swimming in murky waters

• bvlvlsdfhgls

  Thank you for a very good blog entry. Children’s “factual” books are hard to find but Ive found if you wonder around long enough you eventually find them. Ive checked out Stewart Ross’ moon book, its a little bit pricey but its tempted me me enough to  maybe think about getting it.

  It must be hard sometimes for these authors to present their facts in an accessible way as posiible for children without sounding patronising. I do think Terry Deary does do a brilliant job with Horrible Histories and to go with it there is the Horrible Science and Maths books as well. The point is that children wont be extremely well informed just by reading a book such as this but it just might pique their interest and thats what we want as parents or guardians, children who find their own interests after a little initial investigation tend to look at learning in a more positive way.

• wayoffmessage

  Please lots of factual books for even little children, so many little ones are just not that interested in stories about other children going to the zoo. I know little six year old boy who just wants to read about science and engineering-and there’s just nothing for his age group. And History which matters to us all has just disappeared. At school the older ones seem to do The Suffragettes and The Holocaust (without anyone telling them which came first)–that particular “beef” aside, even very little children love to find out new things and factual reading books can be a delight.

• aln

  So great to see even more being done to promote non fiction! As a charity we set up a national celebration for non fiction 3 years ago to level up the playing field with fiction. Non fiction is just as important as fiction its authors and illustrators just as inspiring and creative fiction authors and illustrators. Now in its third year National Non-Fiction Day, which we celebrate every first Thursday in November, is showing to those readers who only read non fiction that their choices are just as important as anyone elses, that it’s fine to read and enjoy non fiction and that its the promotion of all reading that really matters. Our research has also shown us that in schools a large amount of young people read non fiction and the majority of those choose it for pleasure reading.
  Adam Lancaster – National Non-Fiction Day founder

• EdwardBear

  Maybe a cooler name would be “non-fi”

• http://twitter.com/Booksmyth Stewart Ross

   
  Great blog Susan, and thanks for the kind words about my Moon.
  The children’s NF problem has many causes, ranging from school policy, publishers’ lack of imagination, various governments’ undue emphasis on getting on line at the expense of other platforms, and assorted less obvious factors concealed within in our national genes. Sadly, the fewer children’s NF books are sold, the higher the price and the less publishers are prepared to spend on them, meaning harassed, jobbing writers, poor picture and design budgets, less experienced editors (often), fewer off-the-curriculum titles – and so the sinking spiral is perpetuated.
  Britain is far worse off in this matter than, for example, France and the US, and the solution – if indeed Britain really does want more and better children’s non-fiction literature – probably requires a change of culture initiated by the leaders of schools, government departments and publishing houses.
  Stranger things have happened …
  Stewart Ross