The Golden Age of Nonfiction: Gateway to Literacy with Imagination Soup's Melissa Taylor

Open the gates to the golden age of nonfiction literature with Dr. Lisa Hassler and Melissa Taylor, founder of Imagination Soup, as they unravel the often-overlooked power of nonfiction books in education. Did you know that 84% of first graders show a preference for nonfiction, yet these books are not as prevalent as they should be in children's literature? Join us as we discuss the crucial role nonfiction plays in nurturing literacy skills in our information-laden world. Melissa shares her journey from teaching to becoming a curator of children's books, emphasizing the need for incorporating more nonfiction into both classrooms and homes to prepare children for future academic success.

Immerse yourself in the diverse world of nonfiction genres—ranging from browsable to narrative styles—and discover how they can enrich children's vocabulary and reading skills. We’ll discuss beloved titles like "Honey Bee" by Candace Fleming and explore how visual elements in these books enhance comprehension and visual literacy. Together, we celebrate the joy these books bring, encouraging both children and adults to dive into a world that satisfies curiosity and fosters knowledge-sharing. Plus, learn about the five kinds of nonfiction as we discuss why diversifying children's reading materials is vital for their development.

In a practical segment, we delve into strategies for educators and parents to seamlessly incorporate nonfiction into reading and writing education. Discover innovative activities like scavenger hunts for text features, and learn how nonfiction can transform writing instruction through mentor texts and modeling. We also highlight the importance of social reading experiences, such as book clubs and reading challenges, to motivate young readers. Don't miss out on Melissa’s curated list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books for Kids, to kickstart your child’s nonfiction adventure! *

Chapters

• 0:35 Importance of Nonfiction: Research
• 2:12 Melissa Taylor Introduction
• 3:06 Imagination Soup: Children's Book Recommendations and Reviews!
• 4:35 Nonfiction to Literacy Development & its Underrepresentation
• 9:16 Trends in Nonfiction Books: The Golden Age
• 11:41 National Geographic Almanac: Best Bang for Your Buck
• 13:23 Melissa's Favorite Nonfiction Books
• 14:36 5 Genres of Nonfiction Literature
• 17:03 Supports Visual Literacy
• 19:05 Supports Writing Instruction
• 21:29 Tips on Teaching Text Features
• 22:46 Melissa's Published Printables! Resources to Support Children's Literacy
• 23:55 Parting Advice for Parents and Teachers
• 26:00 Wrap Up and Call to Action

Transcript

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:09

Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources. I'm your host, Dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? Today, we're diving into the importance of nonfiction books in children's literature, a topic that's not just fascinating but critically important for the future of our young readers, especially in our current age of information overload and widespread misinformation. Did you know that, contrary to popular belief, many children actually prefer nonfiction books? A study published in the Journal of Literacy Research found that a staggering 84% of first graders, both boys and girls, chose nonfiction when given the option. This preference, however, isn't reflected in what's typically offered to children. In fact, nonfiction books account for only 24 percent of children's books sold. The National Council of Teachers of English notes that many adults, including educators, tend to select fiction when sharing books with children. This disconnection between what children want to read and what they're often given is a missed opportunity in literacy education. Importantly, for some children, nonfiction is more than just informative. It's a gateway to literacy itself. Researchers point out that the informational text can be the key that unlocks reading for some young readers, emphasizing that nonfiction serves as a portal to knowledge, sparking curiosity and fueling a sense of wonder in young minds. Moreover, nonfiction does more than just communicate facts. In today's world, where misinformation runs rampant, nonfiction plays a crucial role in developing 21st century skills. It helps children become critically and informationally literate, offering multiple perspectives on events, sharing scientific discoveries and addressing complex societal issues.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 2:13

Joining me today to share insights on the value of nonfiction in children's literacy and offer tips for engaging young readers is Melissa Taylor. Melissa is the founder and editor of Imagination Soup, the popular education based website and blog that was selected as the best blog by PBS Kids and Scholastic Parent and Child magazine. Melissa, a former teacher and literacy trainer, now freelances for publications like Penguin, Random Houses, Brightly and USA Today Health. Her goal is to make life easier by sharing the best children's books and resources to hook children on reading and learning. Recently, she's partnered with National Geographic Kids Books to highlight how nonfiction reading boosts academic success and lifelong learning. Welcome, Melissa, it's so wonderful for you to join us today.

Melissa Taylor: 3:01

Thank you so much for having me, lisa. I'm excited to talk about my favorite thing reading.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 3:06

Me too. So now you had a diverse career in education, from teaching to creating Imagination Soup. Can you tell us about your journey and what Imagination Soup offers to parents and educators?

Melissa Taylor: 3:18

Sure, yes, I was a teacher and a literacy trainer until I had my kids, and then I decided to leave the classroom and become a freelance writer and I was also teaching writing workshops for kids out of my home. And that was back in 2009 when blogging was just a new thing and one of my entrepreneur groups said hey, there's this new thing called blogging. You should start it. And that's how I started Imagination Soup. And it started out when my kids were little. So I was doing more children's learning activities because of my teaching background and then it sort of morphed into only children's book reviews as my kids aged out. And really it's this idea that one of my superpowers is reading fast. So I hope that I can save time to my audience, who is parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians, that I can read all the books and curate the best ones so that they can easily find what is recommended and already previewed and I can tell people like this is really re-readable, this is really kid appropriate and they can trust that.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 4:22

Yeah, I've seen some of your lists that you've compiled. One of them I love is the list of character costume books. Got some great fall book lists and they go by genre, the age grade level. Those are some fun lists, Thank you. In your recent article with National Geographic for Kids, you emphasize the importance of nonfiction in a child's reading diet. So how does this exposure to nonfiction contribute to the overall literacy development and why is it often underrepresented in classrooms and homes?

Melissa Taylor: 4:51

do you think so many things to unpack there. So it's really interesting how most classrooms that they've surveyed in the research has maybe 20% nonfiction books and kids love nonfiction and it's really important to have access to the nonfiction books because as they go through the grades as you know, being a former teacher they are going to need to comprehend nonfiction primarily, especially in middle school and high school, as well as they do fiction. And when I was teaching fifth grade and I would do my assessments a couple times a year my students regularly tested at least a grade level below on nonfiction and part of that was just exposure and practice. So Common Core is even emphasizing it now, saying that kids really need to be reading 50% of the time in nonfiction, or they call it informational texts, so that they can read for information, and it's a different kind of reading, but it's so important that kids have access and exposure and direct instruction with nonfiction texts right.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 5:53

Absolutely and being able to digest, so that overall literacy development, just being able to have the fluency in knowing how to unpack a nonfiction text, you know when it comes to looking at the table of contents and the index and how do you know your headings, and so being able to kind of take those bits apart and digest it into manageable chunks of information, because sometimes we get a cognitive overload with too much information If they're thinking they need to read it from cover to cover in one sitting and not realizing that with nonfiction we often have the wonderful ability to browse, so it's a great way to get kids hooked into what it is they're already interested in.

Melissa Taylor: 6:35

Yeah, it just engages that natural curiosity that children already have. They're curious about the world and hopefully we can build on that. So then they're also connecting it to their reading life and then when they read about whales they're building their background knowledge so that whenever they read more about whales in their life they'll have somewhere to put that. Because they have that schema They've built that background knowledge whether they're reading about a fiction story or a nonfiction story that has a whale in it. I think that's so important.

Melissa Taylor: 7:02

We often forget that we can't make sense of information if we don't have any background knowledge in it. I would never be able to comprehend a physics textbook, for example, because I have no clue about that, or cars. So I always give the example of when I taught bilingual four or five and there was a reading passage, a state assessment was about spelunking and there was no chance they were going to be able to comprehend that because they had no schema about that. So we do really want to build that to that vocabulary. That nonfiction builds the background knowledge that I think even for our younger learners they can understand, really have more sustained, complex pretend play if we've been reading nonfiction to them. So if they're playing a veterinarian and we've introduced some nonfiction books, maybe even a video, and they know about veterinarians, they know the vocabulary that goes with it, then their play is going to be elevated.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 7:53

Yeah, definitely, because they're going to say this is what they would look like, this is the words they would use, these are the tools they would use, this is the actions that they would do the job. And when you think about the science of reading, it has to do with building vocabulary to increase comprehension. What you were talking about is if you give a child a passage and you want to talk about splunking, but they've never heard of it before, it's a gap in their knowledge. But if nonfiction text had more availability instead of this small percentage that is often in our homes, in our classrooms, then they would have a wider knowledge to comprehend more texts.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 8:28

I did some tests with my kids I don't know if it was Terranova or something like that and one was what is this child doing? It was a little kid bending over by a cat carrier and the child has his little hand by him. Like you know, come to me kind of a thing. If you were imagining that. And the word was coax. I don't know any seven-year-old that's going to get coax out of that picture.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 8:51

Where is this word coming from? And steep, oh, they had a teabag in a cup and I'm like, once again, unless their grandma or their mom or someone is really enjoying the teabags. They're not going to know that that was so unrealistic. So this vocabulary base comes with being exposed to it, and I think that when adults think of children, we think of fantasy. We think that nonfiction is going to be not as engaging. However, the National Education Association is calling this time, right now, golden age for nonfiction. There's been an evolution when it comes to how nonfictions have been rolled out recently. As someone who reviews hundreds of books monthly, what trends are you seeing now in children's nonfiction publishing, and how have the books evolved to engage young readers?

Melissa Taylor: 9:38

That's such a good question. I remember back when I was teaching struggling to even find books that were comprehensible to those primary readers, those first, second, third graders. And now there's a wealth of those books, so they're skewing for early readers. They can read them. Of course National Geographic has the best ones, but also I'm seeing an overabundance of biographies. There's a lot of biographies.

Melissa Taylor: 10:02

But the cool thing that I like too is that we're seeing graphic novels that are nonfiction. There's history comics and there's science comics and those series are so engaging to read. They're sort of a blend of informational fiction and nonfiction, because you'll have like a main character. I think there's one about bats. That's a science comic that the bat is the narrator, so it's giving you some of that feel, sort of a little story arc while conveying information. So those are really fun. I love seeing that. And Survival Scouts is another one that's a main character. That's a girl, but she's going through these. The last one this year, I think, was about a tsunami and you learn all about tsunamis through this character's experience, which is really a fun way to convey information and it feels familiar to kids because of that story arc. But it's also nonfiction elements too. So I'm really happy to see that trend.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 10:56

Yeah, I think that's a big difference. When you think about the way that we had grown up with nonfiction texts, it was very different. My son, for instance he's 32. So this is kind of a while ago. But he was young, maybe nine or so, and we had gone to some garage sale and he gravitated toward this giant dictionary. I mean, it was huge. This thing had to be like 10 inches thick at least and it was really old. The top cover wasn't even on it and when you looked at the new words for the year that they had just added, airplane was in it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 11:25

And he loved this dictionary so much he slept with it, and that to me, is a very traditional nonfiction type of a book. It's alphabetized words. If you get a little sketch here and there, it's really exciting. If you got a color picture, wow, that one really is going to pop out at you. So this new way is much more engaging and National Geographic has always done a great job with that. You've highlighted the National Geographic Kids Almanac as a top resource, so can you explain what makes it particularly effective and how educators and parents can leverage these kinds of nonfiction resources to build reading skills?

Melissa Taylor: 12:01

For sure. I mean, the Almanac is one of the best books that a family can have, because you get a huge bang for your buck it's $15.99. So it's really affordable. And there's almost a page for every day of the year. And it just has this wealth of diverse information. It has photographs that engage readers.

Melissa Taylor: 12:18

There's exposures to so many kinds of knowledge maps, infographics, cartoons and a variety of expository formats that you'll find in other books. But it's browsable, as Melissa Stewart calls it. You don't have to read it cover to cover. You can flip to any page and start reading, which is so appealing to many kids. That was my oldest daughter's preference. She loved the Almanac and the Weird but True books because she could just flip to a page, start reading and then she would tell us all the facts that she learned, which was so amazing. It has interactive elements, which are fun. It has jokes and riddles, quizzes and activities. And then I just think the design, from an overall perspective of design, is really supportive for reading comprehension because it has those nonfiction text features that you'll see in other books but maybe not as pretty. So there are headers, there's captions, there's lists, and it really helps support readers, make sense of the information that they're reading.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 13:12

Yeah, when you are able to put into words what you've read and share that knowledge with others, then you are putting that more into your long-term memory and so you're storing that once you share that. So that's why those discussions and the conversations are so important to have. Do you have any favorite nonfiction books, like any family favorites, or one that's popping out to you, just wondering?

Melissa Taylor: 13:35

Oh my goodness, there's so many, it depends. I have to classify them. It's like picking your favorite kid. I think I love the lyrical nonfiction books. One of my favorites is Honey Bee. It's written by Candace Fleming. The writing in it is so beautiful you can use it as a mentor text to teach almost anything, including figurative language and story arc. I love some of the historical. There's a new one called Evidence and it's about a scientist who figured out where cholera was spreading in London in Victorian time, by Deborah Hopkinson, and that is so beautiful to read. I also love the Almanac because I'm always learning new things. I just learned that the largest snowflake was 15 inches wide and also I have follow-up questions about how they figured that out. So I do have a nonfiction book list divided by grade and age on my website to kind of help steer educators and parents and grandparents who are looking to say which are appropriate for my reader, so hopefully that can help.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 14:35

Definitely, and there's different genres of nonfiction right. So, beyond the traditional, what other kinds of genres are out there?

Melissa Taylor: 14:42

Oh so, Melissa Stewart, are you talking about Melissa Stewart's five kinds of nonfiction? Yeah, yeah, Melissa Stewart, she was a fabulous writer. Anything she writes is amazing. She took a year off to do some research and kind of categorize nonfiction and she found that there's browsable, so that's those almanac type short text blocks, captions, really digestible chunks that's important to have access to. There's active nonfiction which is craft books or cookbooks, something like that where you're doing and learning something which totally counts. I mean, if you're reading anything cooking, you're following craft sequential directions. It's a really important thing to consider.

Melissa Taylor: 15:17

Traditional, which is a topical maybe dogs or cat books that you have, cars, Expository is that topical? But it's more focused in a narrow niche and probably with more writing. Craft lyricism, more specific. So it's maybe about animal homes and it's this beautifully written, really focusing on the language and the vivid verbs. And then the last one is narrative. So that's a nonfiction book that's written like a story, that has characters and dialogue. You often see that with biographies. I think if you can expose kids to all of those things, then you're winning. Same with us as adults we read memoir and then we'll read a maybe more traditional topical book. We want to have that exposure for our kids, because that'll set them up for success.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:02

Yeah, that can leverage the reading skills If you've got a curious kid and they want to know all about plants or trains. So all that building of vocabulary, but actually elevating and bringing up their reading level as well and exposing them to words that they never would have on a reading list. They're not going to have that basal reader because it's not going to be along those lines of. This is grade level words, but those ones that kind of pop out at you something like photosynthesis in a kindergartner's mouth and you'd say, well, it's a big word and they probably won't be able to break it up. It's multisyllabic, and yet it becomes fun for them to know those big words and to share that knowledge, like you were talking about, to surprise their grandma. And the parents get so proud when they can say the big words when they're little because they sound so smart. And then we're all so proud of our kids, like, look at this, they know all about trains.

Melissa Taylor: 16:53

Tell them about the engine, it's amazing it's like the dinosaurs that they know, all these dinosaurs that I can't even pronounce.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:59

Yes, yes.

Melissa Taylor: 17:00

It can be experts.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 17:01

Definitely so. How does increased the use of the visual elements in these nonfiction books support visual literacy, and why is that so important in today's world?

Melissa Taylor: 17:11

It really supports comprehension. So it also supports determining what's important, which is really an important reading strategy when you're thinking about helping kids figure out how to summarize eventually, if they can use the visual elements to decide what's important and what's interesting. I think so many kids, especially in the elementary grades, really struggle with that and I've always found that some kids are sort of natural retailers and natural summarizers. So if you ask what something was about, you may get a one short sentence that's great summary or a monologue for two hours about every single detail in the book. So the visual elements can really help them go. Okay, so this is about the Eiffel Tower and that's a structure in France. Instead of like did you know, the Eiffel Tower has a hidden apartment and it's totally Interesting but not important, right, right. So I like that for the visuals. I think it also just helps them make sense of, cognitively, how to structure the information.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 18:07

Definitely Children having reading disabilities or children that don't speak fluent English. Those images within the text makes a little bridge that allows you to improve the comprehension on topic.

Melissa Taylor: 18:20

Yes, Then you have that picture in your head. I had a little girl who was from a very severe poverty situation and she didn't know the word butterfly in English or Spanish. But once we figured that out she didn't know what she was reading about. We showed her a picture and then we could help match write the word with the picture. Then she could visualize it, Then she could comprehend what she was reading. She was five.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 18:41

So it just improves that visual literacy, and we see it all over the different types of maps that you see when you go to a park, you're on a bus and they're going to have a diagram, maybe, of the route. So being able to see those different images within the text of a nonfiction book helps prepare them for also what they're going to encounter in the real world when they're outside of the classroom. But nonfiction isn't just for reading, though. It's crucial for writing instruction. So how can educators use nonfiction literature to support and inspire young writers, and can you share some strategies for incorporating nonfiction into writing lessons?

Melissa Taylor: 19:20

I love using nonfiction, like I mentioned with Honey Bee by Candice Fleming. I use that a lot so that I even as a mentor text for fiction writing, because you can study craft moves with a book like that, because her word choice and her figurative language are two things that you can pull out and study as a mentor text because it's incredible. And then if you're reading a lot of nonfiction too, it sparks curiosity. So then that could lead to research on a nonfiction topic, which is really cool. But then using text structure to help kids understand their own writing, so that if you're going to do compare and contrast writing, you'll want to use a mentor text. That's a compare and contrast mentor text, that's a nonfiction one. And I always say you've got a model scaffold instruction and then provide that guided instruction.

Melissa Taylor: 20:09

So if you are teaching whatever you're teaching in nonfiction writing or any other integrated curriculums, you just always want to make sure you use a good mentor text. You're modeling writing out loud. So that's one thing that you think allows that you can be thinking about how your brain is moving through the writing process, showing kids how that looks for you so that they can learn from you, and I think that's really a crucial step that a lot of teachers forget, that we can't just assign them here. Go write an animal report we have. Every single step of the way needs to be modeled and guided of. Here's how I take this passage and write a note, and here's how I turn it into my own words. And now here's how I'm going to write a sentence about it. And then we scaffold it. Then we give them that guided independent practice. So whatever we're teaching, that's the most important thing.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 21:01

Yeah, when it comes to delivering that informative paragraph, if they have the knowledge because they've read the facts in an engaging way, then they're ready to share it because they're excited about it and they already know it and they're not searching for all of this because they already have some little base and so it makes it a more natural way of telling if they're able to have that vocabulary, have those good models, like you were saying, with the texts, and then come to their voice a little bit better. So do you have any tips for teaching children how to use those text features effectively?

Melissa Taylor: 21:34

Sure, I think, like I said, with writing you're going to model everything and then you practice. So I think it's fun to do scavenger hunts, see if you can find table of contents, what books have the table of contents, what books have index and what books don't. And with a dictionary we do dictionary races. So can you find the header words for the word caption, that kind of thing? Just kind of make it playful and fun, but remember to scaffold it so you're not teaching every single text structure all in one day, you're just doing it little by little so that they learn what an infographic is.

Melissa Taylor: 22:08

Find an infographic let's share. Let's talk about it. How did it change your comprehension of the information? If it did, where's the captions? Did it have a caption? Where's the bolded words? And so you just want to make sure you're again modeling scaffolding practice, guided and independent. Just kind of make it as playful as you can.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 22:27

Those are wonderful. Do you have more ideas or games on your website as well?

Melissa Taylor: 22:31

I have some. I have some scavenger hunts. I have some bingos. I do have a few, yeah. Oh fun and usually they're free printables and you can download them. I have for Scavenger, hunt and nonfiction and picture books and there's different bingo ones for summer reading and that kind of thing.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 22:51

And you also have some publications like book clubs for kids and reading challenges for kids. So how do those resources complement your work in promoting children's literacy?

Melissa Taylor: 22:56

I find that so many kids are motivated by different things. So my oldest daughter really struggled to read. She didn't like it, and one of the things that worked for me with her was making reading social. So that's why we started a book club when she was in second grade a mom and daughter book club and it really helped motivate her because then she could hang out with her friends and it was fun and she saw her friends really enjoying the book. So that's why I made the book club resource. But I saw that with my own students also. And then the reading challenges. Like I'm not a person who likes a reading challenge per se because I don't know why, but a lot of people do. So that's like if it motivates you and that helps you, then that's why I provide it, because I'm just trying to give people a variety of choices to support the goal, which is helping kids love reading and become proficient readers.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 23:45

Yeah, and then those are available on your website as well. Yes, so parents can just go there and then download it. Would they download it and print it? Correct, awesome, yes, all right. So, as we end our conversation, what advice would you give to parents and educators who want to incorporate more nonfiction into their children's reading routines?

Melissa Taylor: 24:03

I think, access. So make sure that you're providing nonfiction books. You don't have to buy them. You can go to the library and just check out as many nonfiction books as you can Buy the Almanac, because that's like almost 365 pages. That'll keep you busy for a while.

Melissa Taylor: 24:20

Remember to include nonfiction in your read-alouds. A lot of times when we do that, by the time we read aloud with our kids, that's so special. We only use fiction books, but it can be nonfiction too, so don't forget that. And I also think it's really important to model that you're reading nonfiction and sharing your enthusiasm about what you're learning, just like your kids would about. The snowflake is 15 inches wide, whoa, yeah, so that counts for a lot. Kids are learning from our behavior. Right, we're, they're reading and maybe we're reading too. I always used to excuse not to clean my house, but, like I would say, I'm a being a good reading role model. So those are some easy ways to incorporate nonfiction and also leave around books in your house. It kind of looks messy, but for some reason, if I would leave stacks of books around my house intentionally, my kids would just pick them up and start reading. It was really cool.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 25:14

You know, I think that that's really good advice, because when we think about books that are neatly put away on bookshelves right, how often are they going to pull out each one of those books? And even when you go to a library, the ones that are sitting displayed on the top of the shelf, those ones because you can now see the cover become more appealing. So it's just being able to see it. It's like, oh, it's out of the stack, look at that, it looks like a fun book. I can't wait to open it up and flip through it and then, next thing you know, they're sitting there reading it. So, yeah, being able to have them out so they could see the covers, I think. And those nonfiction books have gotten so engaging. Those covers are so bright and vivid and beautiful. Yes, how can they go to Imagination Soup?

Melissa Taylor: 25:56

ImaginationSoupnet and on social media. I'm at Imagination Soup.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:05

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today, Melissa, to discuss the many benefits of nonfiction reading for children.

Melissa Taylor: 26:07

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:12

I hope today's discussion has inspired you to take a fresh look at nonfiction in children's literacy. Now, to put these insights into action, diversify your child's bookshelf with engaging nonfiction books. Follow your child's curiosity to find nonfiction books on topics they love and incorporate nonfiction into writing activities. And if you don't know where to start, check out Imagination Soup's website for Melissa's 100 Best Nonfiction Books for Kids recommendations. By embracing nonfiction, we're not just fostering literacy skills. We're nurturing curiosity, critical thinking and preparing the next generation to be informed thinkers ready to tackle the complex issues of our world. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom. Thank you. In the show notes, it is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.