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ERIC Number: EJ984601
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
Reference Count: 25
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1521-7779
Creating New Knowledge: Books that Demystify the Process
Zarnowski, Myra; Turkel, Susan
Journal of Children's Literature, v38 n1 p28-34 Spr 2012
In the March/April issue of "The Horn Book Magazine," author and editor Marc Aronson wrote a lightening rod of an essay about nonfiction literature. In the article, he claimed that some "new" nonfiction is groundbreaking because it shows "new knowledge as it is taking shape" (2011, p. 57). He referred to authors of this new nonfiction as "explorers" and distinguished them from other authors whom he described as "translators" of existing knowledge. According to Aronson, a crucial difference between the two kinds of nonfiction--the "new" and the "old"--is that author-explorers speculate about the meaning of their material, while author-translators do not. Not surprisingly, Aronson's article caused quite a stir among nonfiction authors. The immediate response of nonfiction writers was hostile, hurt, and somewhat angry. Authors whose books do not explicitly detail their processes of seeking out information, shaping it, and speculating on it resisted the implication that their work was "old" style nonfiction. In this article, the authors describe the heated discussion of the "new" nonfiction that is taking place among nonfiction authors and share fifth graders' responses to this genre. (Contains 2 figures.)
Children's Literature Assembly. 940 Vandalia Road, Morgantown, WV 26501. Tel: 304-291-2393; Fax: 304-291-2393; e-mail: jcl@wvnet.edu; Web site: http://www.childrensliteratureassembly.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Grade 5
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A