Children’s Nonfiction, Biography, and Their Responsibilities to Children

Abstract

A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres of children’s nonfiction.

Keywords

• children’s literature
• children’s nonfiction
• Russell Freedman
• Marc Aronson
• critical engagement
• speculation