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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 43, Issue 4, pp 338–354 | Cite as

Evoking the World of Poetic Nonfiction Picture Books

  • Ted Kesler
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

An increasingly prevalent and accessible form of hybrid nonfiction picture books blends factual information with poetry or poetic devices to create literary nonfiction. This important form of hybrid text has been sparsely examined. This article addresses three questions about poetic nonfiction picture books: first, how might we categorize picture books that represent this hybrid text?; second, by what criteria might we evaluate the quality of these books?; third, based in Rosenblatt’s concept of reader’s stance, how might we read these books? The author develops a typology of six categories along a continuum from poetry to narrative or expository prose. He examines well-established criteria in the fields of picture books, children’s nonfiction, and poetry that can apply to poetic nonfiction picture books. He argues that in the best of these books, the poetry or poetic devices are synergistic with the content and raise the overall reading experience. The author also argues that, depending where along the continuum each of these books is located, a reader’s stance moves along the continuum of efferent to aesthetic experience. All these books demand a dynamic and recursive reading process. He suggests ways to work with teachers to teach deep readings of these books.

Keywords

Children’s nonfiction Poetry Picture books Hybrid texts Reader’s stance Poetic nonfiction 
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Supplementary material

10583_2012_9173_MOESM1_ESM.docx (31 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 32 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Queens CollegeThe City University of New York (CUNY)FlushingUSA

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