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In this series of Teaching Author posts, we’re discussing the areas of overlap between fiction and nonfiction. Today, I’m thinking about creative nonfiction.

What is Creative Nonfiction? According to Lee Gutkind (known as the “Father of Creative Nonfiction”), “The words ‘creative’ and ‘nonfiction’ describe the form. The word ‘creative’ refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques fiction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present nonfiction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner. The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy.”

One critical point about writing creative nonfiction is that creativity does not apply to the facts. Authors cannot invent dialog, combine characters, fiddle with time lines, or in any other way divert from the truth and still call it nonfiction. The creative part applies only to the way factual information is presented.

One way to present nonfiction in a compelling, vivid manner is to take advantage of the techniques of poetry. When I wrote the nonfiction picture book Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move (gorgeously illustrated by Pam Paparone), I made a conscious effort to use imagery, alliteration, repetition, and onomatopoeia while explaining how seeds get around. When she called with the good news, the editor called it a perfect blend of nonfiction and poetry. Yippee, right?

Fiona Bayrock’s “Eleven Tips for Writing Successful Nonfiction for Kids” lists more helpful and age-appropriate methods for grabbing kids’ attention, starting with “Tap into your Ew!, Phew!, and Cool!”

Marcie Flinchum Atkins has compiled a helpful list of ten Nonfiction Poetic Picture Books. She points out that these excellent books (including some by Teaching Authors friends April Pulley Sayre, Laura Purdie Salas, and Lola Schaefer) can be used in classrooms to teach good writing skills. We can all learn from such wonderful examples!

Heidi Mordhorst has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at My Juicy Little Universe. Enjoy!

JoAnn Early Macken

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This whimsical and educational book combines a love for both animals and numbers, which makes it a great way to get animal lovers excited about math while giving them the opportunity to learn more about the individual animals as well.

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National Children's Choice Book Awards Announced...

You may have spied the Children's Choice Awards widget on the right side of my blog. Well the results are in for the award, announced last night at a Children's Book Council dinner in NYC hosted by Jon Scieszka. Here they are (in non-widget form), reinforcing for all of us that kids dig scary stuff, precocious pigs and boy wizards (drumroll please...):

• Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year: Frankie Stein written by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry (Cavendish). I'm posting the cover of this one, because I really dig Kevan and his book. (Murray loves it too, but he's too young to vote.)
• Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year: Big Cats by Elaine Landau (Enslow)
• Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year: Encyclopedia Horrifica by Joshua Gee (Scholastic)
• Illustrator of the Year Award: Ian Falconer, Olivia Helps with Christmas (Simon & Schuster)
• Author of the Year Award: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Scholastic)

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Steve Bissette and Hank Wagner are out here until Sunday interviewing me for an unauthorised book about me that Hank and Chris Golden are writing (Steve's writing a few of the movie chapters, and is here because Chris can't be. It's a pleasure to see Steve here again, and amazing to think we've known each other for 22 years.) I'm happy to help, although am also happier that it's unauthorised -- biographies and things are like lifetime achievement awards, and they make me uncomfortable. After all the travel and suchlike I do not yet have anything resembling a brain, so the interview mostly consists of me going "Ummmmm." They are very patient.

When I go online right now I compulsively and automatically check the Beowulf rating over at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beowulf/. (73% fresh as of time of writing.)
My favourite review so far today -- in terms of feeling that it reviews the film we wrote -- is Ty Burr's at the Boston Globe.

I expect I'll stop checking in a couple of days.

And I just picked up Maddy and her friends from a screening of Beowulf. Maddy found it just as scary as last time, and I am unconvinced that an audience of 13 year old girls is entirely what Beowulf is aimed at. "What did they think?" I asked Maddy.
"They think you're weird," she said.
"Oh. Sorry."
"But don't worry. I explained that you wrote it with Roger Avary, and that all the bits they didn't like, Roger wrote."

I trust that when she is old enough, Miss Gala Avary will adopt the same tactic.

Two new art blogs -- Mia Wolff's at http://wolffbrain.blogspot.com/ and Jill Thompson's at http://jillthompson.blogspot.com/ (go down until you find the page from Magic Trixie).

The BBC World Service Anansi Boys radio adaptation goes out Saturday 20.00pm GMT (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/schedules/internet/wsradio_sat.shtml) and then for a week should be at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/world_drama.shtml

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