{"id":367,"date":"2012-10-30T13:40:29","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T18:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/?p=367"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:15:12","slug":"thinking-about-great-young-adult-nonfiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/thinking-about-great-young-adult-nonfiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about Great Young Adult Nonfiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ts1.mm.bing.net\/th?id=H.4638196097025848&amp;pid=1.7&amp;w=143&amp;h=145&amp;c=7&amp;rs=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"110\" height=\"124\" \/>\u00a0 <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ts3.mm.bing.net\/th?id=I.4671907278160982&amp;pid=1.7&amp;w=104&amp;h=146&amp;c=7&amp;rs=1\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/yalsa\/sites\/ala.org.yalsa\/files\/content\/booklistsawards\/bookawards\/nonfiction\/2012\/steve_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"96\" height=\"134\" \/>\u00a0\u00a0 <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ts1.mm.bing.net\/th?id=I.4547537934354620&amp;pid=1.7&amp;w=131&amp;h=155&amp;c=7&amp;rs=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"113\" height=\"134\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hey all,<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been out and about the last few weeks talking to writers, teachers, librarians and students. Almost all of you have asked what makes good young adult nonfiction. I think it&#8217;s the narrative thread or\u00a0the passion and voice of the narrator as s\/he tells\u00a0a\u00a0STORY\u00a0that just happens to be real. I&#8217;ll be speaking more about that this coming weekend when I talk with Minnesota teachers and librarians. (I love the part where I get to tell my audiences that I wrote about Janis Joplin in<em> Janis\u00a0Joplin Rise Up Singing<\/em> from the perspective of a teen with a fan crush. She was my flawed hero and my cautionary tale.) But I also wrote about Amy Tan from the perspective of connecting mothers and daughters and I wrote about the\u00a0great YA\u00a0novelist and one of the most censored authors, Robert Cormier, from the perspective of what it&#8217;s like to grow up with a gentle dad who tells earthshattering stories. Each narrative perspective is different and it drives the story arc. If you want to learn more about this, you might be interested in\u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org\">Children&#8217;s Literature Network<\/a> website. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But I imagine you&#8217;re all going to want to know about more great nonfiction books than I could possibly provide\u00a0in a\u00a0short session so I&#8217;m listing a few links here for them and for you. Happy reading!<\/p>\n<p>Popular Teen Nonfiction from Goodreads: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/shelf\/show\/teen-nonfiction?page=1\">http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/shelf\/show\/teennonfictionpage=1<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And don&#8217;t forget to look up books that carry the YALSA Excellence in nonfiction award. (I humbly admit the cover of Janis Joplin, Rise Up Singing wears a good sticker.)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ts2.mm.bing.net\/th?id=H.4904960781976385&amp;pid=1.7&amp;w=155&amp;h=155&amp;c=7&amp;rs=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"116\" height=\"112\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ts3.mm.bing.net\/th?id=H.4606142757273850&amp;pid=1.7&amp;w=148&amp;h=144&amp;c=7&amp;rs=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"102\" height=\"98\" \/><\/p>\n<p>YALSA Award-winning Nonfiction 2012: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/yalsa\/nonfiction-award#current\">http:\/\/www.ala.org\/yalsa\/nonfiction-award#current<\/a>\u00a0(You can also be re-directed to previous award winners)<\/p>\n<p>Of course you can browse bookstore lists. But these are two places that provide a thoroughly great start on nonfiction titles for your shelves. Happy reading!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey all, I&#8217;ve been out and about the last few weeks talking to writers, teachers, librarians and students. Almost all of you have asked what makes good young adult nonfiction. I think it&#8217;s the narrative thread or\u00a0the passion and voice of the narrator as s\/he tells\u00a0a\u00a0STORY\u00a0that just happens to be real. I&#8217;ll be &#8230; <a title=\"Thinking about Great Young Adult Nonfiction\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/thinking-about-great-young-adult-nonfiction\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Thinking about Great Young Adult Nonfiction\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,36,27,34,16,31,28,25,35,30,26,14,32,29,33],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abrams-books","tag-amy-tan","tag-biography","tag-childrens-literature-network","tag-janis-joplin","tag-librarians","tag-narrative-voice","tag-popular-ya-nonfiction","tag-robert-cormier","tag-teachers","tag-teen-nonfiction","tag-the-pirate-tree","tag-writers","tag-writing","tag-yalsa-excellence-in-nonfiction-award"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annangelwriter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}