The Power of Creative Non-fiction

By Kathy Kacer

In my non-fiction writing, I am constantly treading a fine and careful line of staying true to history and trying to engage my readers in meaningful stories. It’s a balance that requires both respect for the truth and a storyteller’s instinct for emotional resonance. Creative non-fiction has become essential as a narrative craft in present-day literature. It blends fact and storytelling, turning real events into stories that touch the heart and teach the mind.

Creative non-fiction is built on truth. The people existed. The events happened. The emotions, though interpreted through the writer’s lens, stem from authentic experience. Yet truth alone does not always make a compelling story. What elevates non-fiction into something more meaningful is the way the writer chooses to tell it—through vivid scenes, re-imagined dialogue, character development, and a pace that rises in tension. These tools illuminate the interior lives of individuals and creating a meaningful bond between reader and story.

Creative non-fiction can be especially powerful for younger readers because it blends the emotional pull of a story with the grounding precision of real events. When children encounter history, science, or personal experiences through vivid scenes, engaging characters, and clear narrative arcs, the information becomes easier to understand and far more memorable. This genre helps young readers connect emotionally with people, encouraging empathy and curiosity. At the same time, because the stories are rooted in fact, creative non-fiction builds critical thinking and a deeper awareness of the world. It invites young readers to learn not just by absorbing information, but by experiencing it through the lens of a compelling, true story.

A good example of this genre in action is my latest book, Last Known Address: The Stumbling Stones of Europe. The book uncovers the lives of individuals who were deported or killed during the Holocaust, using small brass stones placed outside former homes. The stories in the book transform historical record into something deeply human, inviting readers to imagine daily routines, family bonds, and the fragile moments before lives were forever altered. It is precisely this blend of truth and narrative craft that makes the book a good example of creative non-fiction’s power.

In a world where facts can feel fractured and attention is fragile, creative non-fiction reminds us that true stories, told expressively, have the power to live on.

About the Author: Kathy is the acclaimed author of more than 30 books for young readers that focus on stories of the Holocaust. They include The Secret of Gabi’s Dresser, To Look a Nazi in the Eye, To Hope and Back, and Last Known Address.

 

A winner of the Jewish Book Award (Canada and the U.S.), and the Yad Vashem Award for Children’s Holocaust Literature (Israel), Kathy has written unforgettable stories inspired by real events. Published in 20 countries, she travels the world speaking in schools and libraries about the importance of the Holocaust and keeping its memory alive. Kathy lives in Toronto. 

Work Smarter, Not Harder: When Research Pays Off Twice

By Nicki Jacobsmeyer

 

Writing a book is not for the faint of heart. The process takes time, grit, and courage. No matter the word count, the work is hard. Hopefully, you find it joyful too. Researching can be intense, especially for our non-fiction projects. I love researching, almost to the point that I allow it to be a distraction from writing. Anyone else with me?

 

Since we need to research to make our work accurate and authentic, sometimes the process takes longer than writing the story. I’ll compare the pile of research materials to my 500-word picture book manuscript and laugh. Were all the sweat and tears of exploring and digging worth it? ABSOLUTELY! But what if we could use all of those investigating hours to work twice as hard for us?

 

When I started working smarter, not harder with my research, I felt elated. In 2017, a critique partner shared an article about the Kentucky packhorse librarians during the Great Depression. The librarians and community instantly stole my heart and I could think of nothing else. I knew I wanted and had to write about this piece of history. Research began. I scoured books, articles, and online resources. I interviewed anyone and everyone I could from historical societies, libraries, descendants of packhorse librarians, etc. And then I finally wrote a non-fiction picture book. For the next seven years, I continued writing, going on submission, revising, and resubmitting with a variety of manuscripts for different age groups. 

Fast forward to the end of 2023, when I stumbled across an opportunity for the adult non-fiction market. Although we know the publishing industry is slow going, I had to jump on this proposal opportunity. As we’ve all experienced, doubt stuck its ugly nose in my business. Do you have enough research? Can you complete the proposal in time? Do you have the support from the community? All the research I’d done over the years for one project waited to be used for another. Once I convinced myself (thank you critique partners), and told doubt to take a hike, I went for it. My research paid off twice. Kentucky’s Packhorse Librarians (Images of America) published with Arcadia Publishing in March 2025. 

What about the original children’s book? I’m delighted to announce that the picture book I penned in 2017, Tales on Trails: The Packhorse Librarians of Appalachia, will make its debut a decade later in the summer of 2027 with Arcadia Children’s Books. 

Your research can work overtime for articles, poems, blog/newsletter posts, short stories, etc.

I’ve research from a poem and short story published in anthologies that were vital for two of my non-fiction middle grade books. Your possibilities are endless!

 

How do you make sure your research is ready for double duty? Here are some insights to help

your future self:

 

1. Bibliography: Make a bibliography along the way, even if you aren’t sure if you’ll use this reference in the final manuscript, or at all. Your story may change different directions during the project and you want all of your resources easily accessible. Your sanity is worth the extra time. You can condense the bibliography upon submission.

 

2. Citing: When drafting and revising, cite your sources within the manuscript. Even if your submission doesn’t ask for embedded citations, this format will be essential to have so you can pinpoint where your facts come from. You’ll be grateful when months or years down the road you need to double check information.

 

3. Recording & Permission: If possible, record all interviews, webinars, lectures, etc. ASK PERMISSION FIRST! I prefer to get a signed permission form for my records either in-person or electronically at the time of the recording. Once permission is granted, you can be in the moment during the interview knowing you can listen to the recording again. State the date, time, person, title, event, location, etc. at the beginning of the recording. Video and audio recordings allow you to observe their facial expressions, energy, and mannerisms. If audio is only available, take notes on these reactions to enrich your manuscript.

 

4. Photos: When researching in person, take more photos than you’ll need. Again, ask permission. Pictures will allow you to bring your story to life and capture details you can repeatedly refer back to when writing.

 

5. Marketing: Make a marketing/promotions/event sheet as you research. Document any and all places and contacts that might be good ideas to have a signing and/or sell your book. Even if the book hasn’t been sold yet, research like it has. 

 

When researching for a project, seek out ways you can apply it to another. Work smarter, not

harder. You got this!

 

What tips do you have? Please share in the comments.

 

About the Author: Nicki Jacobsmeyer writes fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. She has two forthcoming non-fiction children’s books, TALES ON TRAILS and THE GHOSTLY TALES OF MAINE’S HAUNTED LIGHTHOUSES (Arcadia Children’s Books, Summer 2027 and 2026).

 

She is the author of The Ghostly Tales of St. Charles (Arcadia Children’s Books, July 2025),

Kentucky’s Packhorse Librarians (Arcadia, 2025), and others. Nicki is represented by Senior Agent Heather Cashman of Storm Literary. She is a Co-Host of the Way-Word Writers Podcast, a certified career coach, speaker, and business professional. Besides reading and writing she loves to travel, knit, the outdoors, sunsets, family barbecues, and watching a storm come in from her front porch.

USING SCHOLARLY JOURNALS IN YOUR RESEARCH

By Traci Huahn

One of the scenes in my debut picture book faced being cut at the eleventh hour, but was saved thanks to some obscure information about 19th century fruits and vegetables that I found in two scholarly journals. 

I often turn to scholarly journals (meaning any kind of academic or peer-reviewed journal) as part of my research for a book. Since journal articles are written by experts in their field, they provide good overviews of a topic, put events and ideas into broader contexts, and be useful for tracking down primary sources.

One of my favorite sites for finding such articles is JSTOR. For those unfamiliar, JSTOR is a non-profit site that offers online access to thousands of digitized journal collections, open access books, images, primary sources and other materials from around the world. While some content requires you to be affiliated with a partner institution or have a paid subscription, I’ve found that most items are available using their free registration, allowing you to read all open access content and up to one hundred free views of licensed content each month.

To show how useful journal articles can be, the example that I’m sharing comes from my book Mamie Tape Fights to go to School: Based on a True Story (illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan, published by Crown Books for Young Readers). As a side note, though the book is historical fiction, the research for it was no less than for a nonfiction project and it was equally important to make sure that even fictionalized elements were as accurate and probable as possible. I won’t be going into detail about the ins and outs of nonfiction versus informational fiction or historical fiction, but for those interested in learning more, please check out this post by Colleen Paeff on Kirsten W. Larson’s blog and Nancy Churnin’s 2024 NF Fest post, both of which already offer excellent discussions.

Which brings us back to my dilemma about fruits and vegetables.

In the scene in question, the main character Mamie Tape plays alongside her siblings while their mom shops for ingredients to make a traditional Chinese New Year dish called jai, which contains mung bean noodles and vegetables like lily buds, fat choy, and bamboo shoots. Seems simple enough. Except that when the book went through my publisher’s final vetting, we received a note that mung bean noodles might not have been available in the United States at that time, and that fat choy and bamboo shoots were not yet being cultivated here.

We also got these comments about items shown in the art:

This scene (and two others that build off it) was based on Mamie Tape’s great-granddaughter telling me that when she was growing up, Mamie always helped prepare the jai for their family’s Chinese New Year meal. I also knew, from Mamie’s only-known interview, that their family had assimilated into mainstream American culture, but that food was one of the few Chinese traditions they kept. Of course, the fact that Mamie made and ate jai as an adult doesn’t necessarily mean she also did so as a child, so I fictionalized this detail, but it was important for it to still ring true to what could have been possible for the time period.

What to do? After a moment of panic, I thought about all the imported items I see when shopping at my local Asian market. Could any of the food sold in San Francisco Chinatown during Mamie’s time also have been imported?

I plugged in various search terms at JSTOR….and BINGO, up popped two articles! One in California Historical Society Quarterly, which references invoices from the U.S. Custom House in San Francisco, verifying that shipments of bamboo shoots and pomelos (among many other foods) were being imported from Hong Kong as early as the 1850s. And another, in Historical Archaeology, showing 19th-century ledgers from a California farm that employed Chinese workers listing groceries that included black fungus (an English translation for fat choy) and mung bean noodles.

With this information, the scene was saved! Some of the fruits that illustrator Michelle Jing Chan had chosen for the art had to be swapped out (sorry, lychee and durian!) but now armed with lists of other foods that could have been available, it was any easy fix.

So, next time you’re about to start new research, or when faced with a tricky last-minute detail, consider consulting some scholarly journals. If you’ve used JSTOR before, I’d be curious to know what you think of it and where its led you. And if you haven’t, I encourage you to poke around and see what you find!

Traci Huahn (she/her) writes books for kids and especially loves stories rooted in Asian American culture, history, and identity. Her debut picture book, Mamie Tape Fights to Go to School, illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan (Crown Books for Young Readers, 2024), won the Chinese American Librarians Association 2025 Best Book Award for Children's Non-fiction and was named a CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Her next soon-to-be-announced picture book will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers in 2028. Follower her on IG at @tracihuahn and learn more at www.tracihuahn.com.

How I Use Mentor Texts for Craft

By Nell Cross Beckerman

Today I would like to share with you how I have used mentor texts in a granular, practical way: to get your first words on the page. Beginnings (and endings!) are some of the hardest parts of crafting your text, so any hacks to make it easier? I’m in!

I wrote my first three books, Down Under the Pier, When the Sky Glows, and Caves, in my “cloffice”—my closet office, the only place in the house I could close the door. When that got old, we moved to a new house where I fin ally had my own office. Which was great…until I realized when I turned on my computer that something had changed. My fingers felt frozen and my mind was static. I had writer’s block!

Around that time, I had been inspired by walks on my local hiking trail, called the Park to Playa trail. I knew I wanted to write a story about how paths and parks connect communities and bring us closer the nature. But for the first time, I couldn’t figure out how to start.

So, I did what I always do when faced with a new challenge in my publishing career. I thought: What would Kate Messner do?  (WWKMD). Ever since discovering Kate’s book Over and Under the Snow (published by Chronicle, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal), I have followed her as my unofficial mentor-from-afar (although I have been lucky enough for a few personal encounters!)

I love Over and Under the Snow so much I could recite it by heart. It is a lyrical adventure of a father and child as they cross country ski through the wonderland of woods that seem to be in their backyard, observing and learning about the animals over and under the snow (aka the “subnivean zone”) Through this adventure, the family bond deepens, the setting feels intimate and local, and the reader learns some STEM concepts without realizing they are learning at all. Perfection.

What if I used Kate’s introductory text, but swapped my words for hers? Wait…but isn’t that plagiarism? Definitely not what I’m proposing! Not imitating the story, but studying the craft. Let me show you what I mean:

Kate’s opening lines are simple and magical:

 Over the snow I glide.

Into woods frosted fresh and white.

 First, I sat down to pick apart why I liked these lines so much. I never studied creative writing in college and have no background in education (I’m a former documentary TV producer.) I’m still learning terms like “assonance” and “consonance.” But, I have been a reader my whole life, and I know when I like how words sound when I say them out loud.

 In layman’s terms, I noticed:

•   The repeated long sounds of “O” (over, snow)

•   The echoed long “I” sounds in I glide and white.

•   Alliteration of frosted fresh.

•   The inverted sentence structure: Over the snow I glide instead of I glide over the snow.

Here’s what I tried, using Kate’s structure but swapping in my own words.

                               

Kate’s words	My words
Over the snow I glide.	Up the path I climb   (repeating “p” sounds)
Into woods frosted fresh and white.	Stepping from pavement to earth, leaving the river of cars behind.   (Continuing the “p” sounds, repeating “v” sounds, repeating “I” sound in “climb” and “behind”)

 

As you can see, I already have veered off from Kate’s structure in the second line. Turns out, I just needed her to hold my hand for that very first line to get my fingers in action.

Those lines disappeared in revision, so there is no visible trace left of Over and Under the Snow in From Park to Playa: The Trails That Connect Us (published by Abrams, illustrated by Sophie Diao.) But I will always be grateful to Kate’s book for helping with the building blocks of mine.

How to Use This Strategy in Your Own Writing

If you find yourself staring at blank screen with an idea lodged in your head, try this:

•            Choose a mentor text you love, especially one with a tone or structure that fits your project.

•            Copy the text in full, by typing it out or writing it longhand. Follow line breaks and page turns. This will help the style seep into your creativity bank.

•            Study the opening lines closely. Listen for repeated sounds, rhythm, and sentence structure.

•            Swap in your own words, Mad Libs–style, using the same structure. Verb, noun, adjective, etc!

•            Let go of the result. This is a warm-up, not a final draft. Just gets words on the page so you can get your idea out.

I hope it goes without saying that you shouldn’t do this for a full book! That would be creepy, and I’m definitely not advocating anything that smells like plagiarism in any way shape or form.

I’ve only used this method once, but it’s a tool I’m grateful to have in my toolbox. And sometimes that’s all you need—a mentor text to hold your hand just long enough to get you started.

There are so many ways to use mentor texts to help your writing.  I hope you’ll join me and NF authors Laura Purdie Salas (please link to https://laurasalas.com/), Michelle Schaub (please link to https://www.michelleschaub.com), and Jolene Gutiérrez (https://www.jolenegutierrez.com/ ) as we reprise our NCTE panel Writers Inspiring Writers: How Both Authors and Students Use Mentor Texts to Reach Their Writing Dreams, hosted with writing prompt breaks from the Southern Nevada Writing Project (https://snwp.org/), offered for free on Zoom. Visit NellCrossBeckerman.com for details to sign up.

If you’ve tried something like this, I’d love to hear about it. What mentor text helped unlock your writing? 

About the Author: Nell Cross Beckerman is the author of Scholastic’s multi-award-winning series, Adventure Through Nature (Caves, Volcanoes, and Forests) and the forthcoming Coyote & Me (Beach Lane Books, illustrated by Yas Imamura.) Sign up for book, teaching, and event updates at NellCrossBeckerman.com

From Lyrical Poem to Nonfiction Debut Picture Book: One Writer’s Journey

By Judy Bryan

 

My debut picture book, ONE GRAIN OF SAND (Beach Lane Books 2027), started as a poem, a lyrical ode to everything one tiny grain of sand may have been. 

The idea for this story came to me on a sunny beach in Mexico. While sifting the warm sand through my fingers, I noticed many different colors, so unlike the sand I played in as a child on the sandbars of Lake Wisconsin. 

 

The first sentence formed immediately: 

 

Have you ever held a grain of sand, and wondered what was in your hand?

 

I’m curious by nature, so my brain began asking questions.

• Why are there so many colors?
• Why was it different from the sand where I’m from? 
• How did it all end up on this particular beach? 
• What was it made of? 

 

Those questions led me to research the different kinds of sand. I searched the internet, checked out books from the library, talked to geologists, and discovered every single grain used to be something else . . . rocks, bones, fossils, shells, glass, even a chip from the tip of a distant mountain. How they end up washed ashore on beaches around the world is a fascinating look into weathering, erosion, tides, and time.

 

Loaded with information, facts, and scientific terminology, I sat down to write. I knew the poem I’d started would be factual, but how could I make it engaging? I’d recently taken Renée LaTulippe’s Lyrical Language Lab (highly recommend!) and began incorporating what I’d learned: rhythm, rhyme, lyrical language, and poetic devices. These all help create vivid images that enchant and enlighten, which in turn make reading nonfiction entertaining and fun! They also help educators bridge the topic they’re teaching with language arts, turning lessons into rich, language-filled explorations. 

 

There are many excellent lyrical nonfiction picture books on the market today. They are filled with drama, fascinating subjects, insightful sidebars, and extensive back matter. Here are a few recent titles that have caught my attention, all gorgeously written and illustrated:

 

In the World of Whales by Michelle Cusolito, illustrated by Jessica Lanan (Neal Porter Books, 2025).

 

Forests: An Adventure Through Nature by Nell Cross Beckerman, illustrated by Kalen Chock (Orchard Books, 2025).

Interested in writing your own lyrical nonfiction picture book? Here’s a short Brain-Storming Activity to get you started.

• First, you need a topic. Something that interests you. Find a spot you love. It could be your own backyard, curled up in your favorite chair, or anywhere that inspires you. 
• Look around. Take a long, deep breath. Let it out slowly. Do that again. Quiet your mind.
• What do you see? 
• Hear? It helps to close your eyes.
• Smell? 
• Feel? 
• What piques your curiosity? 
• Begin asking questions.
• Write it all down. I find word banks helpful at this point. 

Did anything spark an idea? Are you excited? Tingling? Fingers itching to get started? I hope so! The next step is researching to find answers. WARNING: This could take you down a long, but fascinating, rabbit hole of information. 

Enjoy the journey! I’m rooting for you and can’t wait to read your story.

 

Judy Bryan is a children’s author and poet. Her books inspire, entertain, and foster a natural curiosity about the world. An active member of SCBWI and past Assistant Regional Advisor for Wisconsin, Judy also belongs to the Courage To Create Community and the 12X12 Picture Book Challenge. She’s a mom to three wonderful humans and two cuddly cats. When not reading or writing, she enjoys boating, kayaking and hiking Wisconsin’s Ice Age trails with her husband. For more information, please visit https://judybryanauthor.com.