Writing Nonfiction

By Henry Herz

I’ve had the opportunity to write four creative nonfiction picture books that are anthropomorphic “autobiographies”—I Am Smoke, I Am Gravity, I Am Light, and I Am Wind—all illustrated by the amazing Mercè López and published by Tilbury House. 

How did I go down this path? Editors, we're told, are always looking for new approaches. So, I put on my thinking cap. There are some picture books with anthropomorphic characters, but I'd never seen smoke treated as children's book subject, much less a character. And who better to describe smoke than smoke itself? Still, smoke isn't even corporeal. Would editors consider such so unusual approach? Would this stray too far from the trodden path? I rolled the literary dice.

Subverting expectations is a tried and true writing technique. The saying “where there's smoke, there's fire” tells us both are dangerous. But what about the beneficial uses of smoke? Also, since smoke is telling its own story, I had to consider what type of character voice to employ. Smoke is ancient, dark, shifting, mysterious. That inspired me to have smoke speak in a spare, lyrical voice, using alliteration and riddles.

I also wanted the book to have a narrative structure rather than a simple recitation of facts. I considered the carbon dioxide given off by wood smoke. Two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom. Carbon... Inspiration struck like lightning splitting a tree. Plants are the lungs of the Earth. They breathe in carbon dioxide through their stomata. They drink up water through their roots. Sunlight provides energy to split those molecules. The plant forms cellulose from carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, sequestering more and more carbon as they grow. Conversely, burning tree branches releases the stored carbon. Eureka! Smoke has a “cycle” too. 

In I Am Smoke, smoke tells its own story, explaining the various ways in which people have employed it over the ages and across the world. Not only did this add richness to the story, it added marketing hooks: STEM, geography, history, and social science. Authors focus naturally on story, but we must also factor in marketing considerations.

 

 

 

About the Author:  Henry Herz is a children’s literature author, educator, and editor known for blending history, science, and creativity into engaging books for young readers. He has written numerous award-winning nonfiction and fiction titles that make complex ideas accessible and fun, and he frequently collaborates with experts to ensure accuracy and depth. In addition to his writing, Herz is a dynamic school presenter and the editor of acclaimed anthologies that showcase diverse voices in children’s publishing.

Assignment vs. Freelance: Which One Wins?

By Amy Houts

I love writing nonfiction on assignment, but I also love writing freelance. What about you? Have you ever considered writing nonfiction on assignment? That’s when a publisher assigns you a topic. They supply all the specifics about the project including a deadline, contract, and payment amount called a “flat fee” (no royalties, no matter how many copies of the book sell). It’s a fun challenge! 

Of my 100+ books, the majority were written on assignment for educational or Christian publishers. About half are nonfiction. Most recently, I wrote four holiday books for Amicus (a division of The Creative Company) for their “Curious About” series: Presidents Day, Easter, Memorial Day, and Independence Day. 

You might like writing freelance better, or maybe you’d like to do both like I do. Following is a comparison of writing nonfiction on assignment vs. writing nonfiction freelance to help you decide.

Writing Nonfiction on Assignment

The publisher chooses the topic. I’ve found every topic I’ve researched interesting, but I’ve enjoyed some more than others. Publishers often ask your preferences. You can list you enjoy writing about science, social studies, or math in your cover letter or on your application.  

Detailed guidelines: Editors send detailed information: topic, word count, content, grade level, and more. Sometimes it’s pages long with an outline, style guide, etc. I refer to these documents again and again. 

Limited time to research and write: Deadlines are usually short, depending on the grade level and word length. For early grades, I’ve typically had one to four weeks to research and write a book. For older grades, I’ve had as long as three to four months to research and write. Keeping a detailed bibliography is a must. Often editors want primary sources where you talk to experts along with articles from reliable websites as well as books on your subject. Both following the guidelines and having a deadline are stressful. Imposter syndrome can’t last long! You have work to do.

Work with a talented team of editors: I’ve enjoyed working with editors who give me insight, support, and answer my questions. Getting constructive feedback is both helpful and a little daunting. Often one or more revisions are needed or expected. A few editors have become my dear friends.

Payment and publication is guaranteed: You will earn the amount listed in your contract and your book will be published! Often, the terms are 30-60 days after revisions when the final manuscript is submitted. Of course, you need to complete the assignment, which might include not only a manuscript, but discussion questions, a bibliography, sidebars, and a glossary. 

No promotion needed: There’s no need to promote a book when you don’t earn royalties. The publisher does not expect you to be involved in promotion on the same level as a freelance book. They take care of advertising and sales. I post about all my books, both those I’ve written on assignment and those I’ve freelanced, on social media. I’ve purchased author copies and sold books at school visits, but there isn’t a push to promote. It still takes creativity, inspiration, energy, and determination to write a book on assignment. It helps build credits and show you are a professional. As always, it feels great to hold a book you’ve written in your hands. 

 

Writing Nonfiction Freelance 

You choose the topic: You might have a special interest or know what you want to write about. There are many topics from which to choose. You must decide on one and narrow it down. Then you need to research to make sure there aren’t other books on your topic or with your particular angle.    

Create your own guidelines or outline. Know where you are going, what structure you want to use (or try several), and what you want to teach. It helps with nonfiction to have an outline. With fiction, I’m a pantser, writing without a plan or detailed outline, but with nonfiction, I become a plotter. Remember, with nonfiction, you don’t need to write the whole book to start submitting your proposal. You need two completed, polished chapters, a detailed outline, and query email. 


Research as long as you want, to your heart’s content: As a former librarian, I love research! Getting lost in the many ways (primary sources, internet, books, articles, and more) to find out about something is fun, motivating, and satisfying. This can be an advantage or disadvantage. Sometimes I’m enjoying the research so much, I don’t want to stop to actually start writing. Or sometimes I go down the rabbit hole spending way too much time doing off-topic reading.   


Work on your own: You might enjoy working on your own if you have a strong vision for your project. You don’t have a team to tell you if you’re on the right track or anyone to answer your questions. Your critique group can give feedback. Or, if you’re lucky enough to have an editor interested, they might request an R&R, “revise and resubmit.” You will probably just have one chance to revise, not the back and forth communication like you would have with an editorial publishing team.

Payment and publication are not guaranteed: An editor might love your topic, sample chapters, and outline and reward you with a contract. Then you will need to complete your book. Or, an editor might be interested and promise a contract, but they change their mind. (That’s happened to me more than once.) Or, you might spend many hours working, and no one is interested! What do you do then? I was so passionate about a local “ladies band” who participated in a 1913 voting rights parade in Washington, D.C., I decided to self-publish it.  

Promotion: Authors are expected to promote their books in a big way—much more so than when my first picture book was published in the 1990s. Of course, you want your book to sell. It’s not just the royalties, it’s your message, your information, your mission. There’s so much you can do! In-person readings, school visits, speaking engagements, blog tours, webinars, and social media posts. I’ve developed activity packets and sold books at vendor shows. Most of this will happen just before and after your book releases. But it doesn’t end. I’m still promoting my Earth Day book, God’s Earth is Something to Fight For, even though it was released in the fall of 2023.

If you want to try writing on assignment, how do you break in? Submit your resume and cover letter to the educational publishers such as those listed in the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators) resource THE BOOK. Meet editors of educational publishers at conferences. And/or network with other writers to recommend you. Writing Nonfiction on Assignment vs. Writing Freelance? There’s no clear winner or loser. I still submit my freelance work, but also have success writing nonfiction on assignment. It’s the best of both worlds! 

 

Amy Houts is the author of 100+ books for children. She writes for general market, educational, and faith-based publishers. Amy retold 60 fairytales, folktales, and classic stories on assignment for the series, Compass Children’s Classics. Her 10 nonfiction science early readers were published by Highlights. Amy’s faith-based books include bath books, Noah’s Ark and The Creation (Sunbeam/Bushel & Peck Books), God’s Earth is Something to Fight For (Sunbeam/Bushel & Peck Books), and God’s Protection Covers Me (Beaming Books). To find out more, see: https://amyhouts.com and Linktr.ee/amyhouts.  

Putting the Story Back into History

By Marissa Moss

One reason I write historical nonfiction is because I want kids to see how exciting real history is. Textbooks may be boring, but going right to original source material rarely is. When I wrote the diary of a pioneer girl taking the Oregon Trail in 1850, I read stacks of pioneer journals, some published, most not. I felt like I was looking over the writers’ shoulders, fording rivers alongside them. The result, Rachel’s Journal, is meant to give students the same thrill I got, the same sense of being close to an experience that happened in a completely different era.

One way to grab students is to tell them tales they don’t know about, giving them that wonderful sense of discovery.  I love stumbling onto people who should be better known but aren't. Those are the stories I turn into books, the tales of courage and achievement that deserve to be widely known.

   

 

Maggie Gee was that kind of lucky discovery.  I found her in a local newspaper article about WWII veterans.  I didn’t know that women had flown warplanes in WWII and it seemed like an important story for kids (and adults) to know about.  

 

I reached out to Maggie and asked for an interview. That interview and the many conversations that followed became a picture book. Maggie impressed me with her drive, her optimism, her courage. She barely mentioned the discrimination she faced when she talked about her life. As a child growing up in Berkeley, as a Chinese-American she couldn't swim in the public pools. But she could serve her country in wartime. Maggie not only had many stories, she had photo albums, even her WASP training materials, including a guide to aircraft, allied and enemy. She had a treasure trove of source material about the WASP experience, all useful for the story I wrote.
 

I thought of Maggie’s grit, her enthusiasm for taking risks and following her dreams, when I started looking for a Civil War story. I wanted to find a woman who had made similar daring choices. I started by reading widely, about both the North and the South. I learned that more than 400 women had disguised themselves as men and fought as soldiers for one side or the other. Could one of those women’s lives hold the story I wanted?

I plowed through books about nurses, soldiers, spies, but they all lacked some essential characteristic.  Some were there to be with a husband, brother, father, or fiancé. Some were adventurous, but not particularly patriotic or admirable. Very few cared about the issue of slavery.

Sorting through all these women, I found one who seemed promising. The first book I read about her didn’t tell me much, but it gave me enough of a sense that I wanted to learn more. When I saw she’d written her own memoir of her soldiering life, that I could hear in her own voice her motives and intentions, it was like finding a treasure trove. Source material like this is crucial to make history vivid and accurate.

That woman was Sara Emma Edmonds, aka Frank Thompson. She had integrity, bravery, loyalty to the Union. She wrote movingly about the horrors and wrongs of slavery. But there was more. Edmonds was the only woman to successfully petition the government after the war for status as a veteran. She wanted her charge of desertion changed to an honorable discharge, and she wanted a pension for her years of service.  Suffering from malaria she’d caught in the Virginia peninsula campaign early in the war, she needed medical care she couldn’t afford without it.

It took several years and two separate acts of Congress, but Edmonds received the legal recognition she so richly deserved. Men she’d served with testified on her behalf, praising her steadiness under fire, her work as a battlefield nurse, a general’s adjutant, a postmaster, and even a spy. All of this was more original source material.

I use the same kind of material in the middle-grade nonfiction I write. I follow the trail of whatever I'm writing about to get to documents directly from the period. You can read newspapers from the 1700s in the Library of Congress. The National Archive has digitized much material as well. Recently, I wrote a book about a woman who worked as a codebreaker before there was any intelligence agency in the American government. Much of her work had been declassified and I could read it on the NSA's site.

This is the history I like best, a kind of time travel that evokes real people doing amazing things: powerful stories that actually happened.

 

Marissa Moss has written than seventy children's books, from picture books to middle-grade and young adult novels. Best known for the Amelia’s Notebook series, her books are popular with teachers and children alike, using graphic formats to introduce history in an accessible, appealing way. Barbed Wire Baseball won the California Book Award, Gold medal and the California Young Reader Medal. It has also been banned from Texas and Florida schools.

 

In 2013, Moss founded Creston Books. The small press has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Booklist, as well as awards. Each list balances debut authors and established names, showcasing the best in children's books.

Fact Checking: What to do with Irrelevant Facts, Unreliable Sources, or Time-Specific Facts

By Darcy Pattison

As nonfiction authors, we stick to the facts! I am terrified of a book being published with mistakes. But what if the facts are not as straightforward as True or False? 

When kids research a topic for an essay or research paper, one of the hardest tasks is sorting through information to find the relevant information while discarding information that is off-topic or irrelevant to the writing task. It’s the same for those who write nonfiction books for kids. 

Spelling and Location Names Changes Over Time

Every history writer will have a story about conflicting names for a location. For my book, George Washington’s Engineer, I found maps that conflicted when naming a location. Rufus Putnam served as engineer to General Washington during the Revolutionary War. During the frigid winter of 1775-1776, Washington asked Putnam to build a wall to protect troops. Winter soil, however, was frozen making it impossible to dig a foundation to build a fence. Putnam researched ideas and found a solution that allowed the Colonial army to stop the siege of Boston without firing a shot. 

I needed to follow the troop movements around Boston, but it quickly became complicated because place names change rapidly; or, the spelling of the place name varies widely. 

For example, in documents of the time, Lechmere Point is also called Leachmor Point or Leachmoors Point. I had to decide how to handle this. For consistently, I used Putnam’s spelling whenever possible. If he didn’t name a location, then I used the spelling from maps of the time. For purposes of the story, it’s more appropriate to use the name used at the time; but I also try to include today’s name when possible. 

 

Fact Checking Memoirs: When Memory is Faulty

One valuable resource for George Washington’s Engineer was the autobiography of Rufus Putnam. Such documents are available through various sources online.

Putnam wrote that he read Attack and Defense of Fortified Places by the British engineer John Mueller, which inspired his idea of using chandeliers (a structure to hold bundles of sticks) to build a portable wall. I based my story on Putnam’s statements. My fact checker, however, found a copy of Mueller’s book online and the chandeliers are not mentioned. Mueller wrote several books, though, and after checking other titles, she found the chandelier information in Field Engineer by John Mueller. In other words, Putnam had a faulty memory when he wrote his autobiography. He correctly remembered reading a book by Mueller but misremembered the title of the book that inspired his engineering feat. 

 

International Date Line and Time Zones: When Facts are Irrelevant

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the shore of Japan causing a huge tsunami that killed thousands and damaged a nuclear plant. But the waves from an earthquake travel out in concentric circles, which meant the tsunami traveled across the Pacific Ocean and eventually struck Midway Island. On the island is the largest colony of Laysan albatrosses that includes the oldest known wild bird in the world, Wisdom. In early drafts of my story, Wisdom, the Midway Albatross, I wrote the date as March 10. Why? As the tsunami crossed the Pacific Ocean, it crossed the International Date Line before reaching Midway. 

Because we live on a globe that rotates, we divide the earth longitudinally from the north to south into 24 roughly equal sections, each section representing one hour of the day. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean at roughly 180 degrees is the International Date Line. When you cross the date line traveling east, you subtract a day, and if you cross the line traveling west, you add a day. 

By Japanese time, the tsunami hit at about 2:40 pm on March 11. Midway Island lies just east of the date line. It took about 10 hours for the tsunami to travel across the Pacific Ocean to Midway where it struck at about 11:46 pm, March 10, Midway time, but lasted for four hours into the early morning of March 11. That meant it technically struck Midway the day before the earthquake, which caused the tsunami.

However, the exact times and dates were irrelevant to the story. I used the date, March 11, when the earthquake struck Japan, but just added the ten hours. Trying to explain about the International Date Line was off topic and too complicated for the story. The story just says the tsunami traveled across the Pacific and struck at about midnight, and then “The next morning…”

When you write nonfiction for kids, you need to find the facts. But sometimes, you must interpret changing place names, leave out confusing and irrelevant information, or correct a primary source. 

Children’s book author and indie publisher DARCY PATTISON has written over seventy fiction and nonfiction award-winning books for children. Five books have received starred PW, Kirkus, or BCCB reviews. Awards include the Irma Black Honor award, six NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Books, six Eureka! Nonfiction Honor book (CA Reading Assn.), three Best STEM Book, two Junior Library Guild selections, two CLA Notable Children’s Book in Language Arts, two Notable Social Studies Trade Book, an Arkansiana Award, and the Susannah DeBlack Arkansas Children’s History Book award. She’s the 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Governor’s Arts Award for Individual Artist for her work in children’s literature. Her books have been translated into eleven languages.

 

Making the Hard Stuff (look) Easy

By Cynthia Levinson

Writing nonfiction for kids is an act of translation. Doing the background research—interviewing scientists, visiting museums, reading a subject’s diaries, etc.—is thrilling. But the trick is to convert some of what you’ve learned into a book with kid-appeal (and editor-glee). This task is especially challenging when the material is technical, conceptual or just plain tough. How do top-of-their-game nonfiction writers pare the mountain of evidence they’ve amassed and channel what’s left into text and illustrations that are comprehensible and meaningful? Here are some approaches.

1. Keep it basic. Hardly anything could be more technically complex than physics (at least for me). In the picture book On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein (Chronicle Books), author Jennifer Berne and illustrator Vladimir Radunsky draw in readers with an opening sentence that moves from the universal (“as the stars swirled in the sky”) to the familiar (“as the Earth circled the sun”) to the particular (“as the March winds blew through a little town by a river”) to the personal (“a baby boy was born”). Then, rather than delve into mechanics, they simplify the concept of light by focusing on a beam on which little Albert rides a bicycle!

In the philosophical realm, Paige Britt, with Sean Qualls and Salina Alko, accomplish the same magic with the highly conceptual, very low word count Why Am I Me? (Scholastic Press). 

2. Hook your reader at the get-go. In their picture book We Go Way Back (Roaring Book Press), Idan Ben-Barak and Philip Bunting talk directly to kids with the opening line “Hey, you! Yes, you!” After the page turn, they get serious: “What is life?” And, they’re off—with kids inevitably along for the ride.

3. Make the text conversational. This advice can be especially useful in books for older readers, who want more information but in digestible forms. Pamela S. Turner, who also talks directly to readers in How to Build a Human in Seven Evolutionary Steps (Charlesbridge), raises the questions she’s sure are in their minds, and then writes, “So glad you asked.” It’s as if she’s chatting with them.

4. Put the technical stuff into sidebars. Christina Soontornvat’s middle-grade All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team (Candlewick Press) tells a gripping story with suspense, personalities, and cultural context and places such technical scientific information as “Human Responses to Levels of Oxygen Concentration” into charts. She relegates other unfamiliar information, such as “Buddhism in Thailand,” to sidebars. 

5. Mix writing styles. The chapters in my books Fault Lines in the Constitution (with my husband, Sanford Levinson, Peachtree Publishers) and Who Owns the Moon? And Other Conundrums of Exploring and Using Space (with Jennifer Swanson, Margaret Quinlin Books) open with a short narrative story, then move on to expository legal, historical, and scientific information, mixed variously with graphics, sidebars, diagrams, QR codes, and other means of keeping readers actively engaged with the material. 

6. Let the illustrations convey the hard stuff. It’s not just science, philosophy, and law that can stump kid-lit writers. So can frightening experiences. Tonya Engel paints a ghost-like but dark and looming figure in Rise: From Caged Bird to Poet of the People (Lee & Low Books) to show the specter of a child molester while Bethany Hegedus’s subtle free verse merely hints at what might happen.

7. Respect your audience. Teens want and deserve to be taken seriously and can absorb and ponder serious subjects and material. Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and adapted for young adults by Eric Singer (Putnam) deals with physics, politics, romance, and more. Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group (Houghton Mifflin), Deborah Heiligman’s Loudmouth: Emma Goldman vs. America (a love story) (Farrar Straus Giroux), and Ann Bausum’s White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History (Roaring Book Press) all deal straight-forwardly with complex politics, undercurrents in America, and violence.

How can you accomplish what these authors do? Try this: Choose a topic about which you’re curious but know nothing. No WIPs allowed! (For instance, how does a refrigerator work? Or, what is the mind-body problem?) Next, list all of the questions you have about the topic. It’s likely that your questions will be as basic as your readers’. Now, using your questions and the suggestions above, write the first sentence of a book. 

 

About the Author: Cynthia Levinson writes nonfiction books for young readers, aged five and up. Focusing on social justice and law, her books have received the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal; the Carter G. Woodson, Julia Ward Howe, and Crystal Kite Awards; Golden Kite honors; and Best Book recognition from multiple organizations, including the National Science Teaching Association, among other honors. She and her husband divide their time between Austin and Boston.