When
new writers find out that I write primarily nonfiction, many of them sigh. “I understand that you can make money at it,
but I want to be creative.”
Let
me clue you in on a secret – nonfiction, especially nonfiction for children, is
creative and that creativity starts with the idea. Take one idea that has kid
appeal. Add it to another idea with kid
appeal, stir the two together and you get a brand new idea that is also . . . (can
you guess?) . . . creative.
That’s
what Kelly Milner Halls did when she wrote Dinosaur
Mummies. Dinosaurs had been done. The
same with mummies, but dinosaur mummies?
Not only did the topic have instant kid appeal, it was something
creative no one else had touched.
Another
creative approach is to let kids in on a secret. “The other adults lied to you but I’m here to
tell you the truth. They don’t think you
can handle it but I know better.” That’s the subtext for David Harrison’s Pirates. He makes it plain that the life
of a pirate was tough and it was often short.
Not only did David come up with a topic that is original for its honest
approach, he also handled it in a creative way.
This isn’t your standard prose nonfiction. The story is told through poems.
Picture
books are written to be read aloud and the very best authors use their
creativity to make their book a fun read aloud for both the reader and the
listener. Some writers use rhyme (see
Lisa Wheeler’s Mammoths on the Move). Donna
Bateman takes rhyme and notches it up in Out
on the Prairie. How? She patterns
her text after “Over in the Meadow” while still imparting solid information about
the flora and fauna of the tall grass prairie.
You
don’t have to write picture book nonfiction to use a creative approach. In his novel-length book, Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the
World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, author Steve Sheinkin tells readers about
the early atomic arms race. The topic is
worthy of James Bond and the execution is no less gripping than a spy novel. He uses narrative to build suspenseful scenes
that pull the reader in to this high-stakes adventure.
Any
of these topics could have been written up in a ho hum encyclopedia style which
would be sure to lose readers if it ever made it out of the slush pile. Instead, these authors used their creativity
to the max.
Ask
yourself. Are you creative enough to
write for today’s nonfiction market?
--SueBE
Sue Bradford Edwards is teaching Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults in the WOW! Classroom this October and November.
