Trade book publishers these days want to restrict nonfiction trade books to just 32 pages, the least expensive size for printing. Never mind that the author is supposed to fit in as much information on topics as broad as North American bird habitats or teeth and appeal to age levels from 5 to 10 years old.
Sneed Collard's Solutions
Sneed Collard writes nonfiction books that succeed in appealing to a broad audience but still convey lots of interesting facts about a variety of animals. In his books "Teeth" and "Wings", following a brief introduction, Collard has headings on each following page that can be read in order to create a text for the youngest readers. Each heading is followed by a paragraph detailing the subject using a single species as an example. Here's how he does it in "Teeth" (Quoted with permission from the author):
Introduction: "It's hard to imagine life without teeth. Look around. Many animals have them. That's no surprise, because teeth do amazing things."
Following pages:
"Teeth slice." (Then text about vampire bats)
"Teeth stab." (Followed by text about snow leopards)
"Teeth crack." (Text about the spotted hyena)
And so on.
Collard's illustrator, Phyllis V. Saroff, adds value to the information content with her art, too, with inserts showing the skulls and/or teeth of the animals in the background or in an insert.
Collard's book "Wings" uses the same format, with an introduction and pages with headings that read like a story. That book's illustrator, Robin Brickman, adds information as well, such as by including a closeup of butterfly scales as part of the a collage of butterflies and moths and swirling arrows in illustrations of a dragonfly and a hummingbird to show how the wings move during flight.
Melissa Steward's "A Place for Birds"
Steward's thirty-two page book, illustrated by Higgins Bond, is chock full of information about birds. The end papers have range maps for the species discussed in the text, freeing the interior pages from the burden of boring range descriptions. In twelve spreads, one level of text provides general information, the other is specific about a species that's an example of the general topic for that spread. For example, the problem of pollutants is accompanied by information about the bald eagle, while one about habitat loss is illustrated by the crested honeycreeper in Hawaii.
The first spread and the last two have general information above and more detail on the sides of the pages. The final spread, for instance, mentions that there are ways we can help birds survive. One side text lists ways the reader can help birds, the other tells what a garden needs to provide in order to attract birds.
A Growing Nonfiction Trend
Other authors are also finding ways to condense information in their books and to appeal to a broader readership. Dorothy Hinshaw Patent's book, "When the Wolves Return: Restoring Nature's Balance in Yellowstone," uses two levels of text, and her "Big Cats" reduces the information on size and weight of the various big cat species to small boxed items. As competition in the publishing world gets more and more intense, the trend towards expanding the audience for a book while reducing the space for information is sure to continue.
Dorothy Patent - Dorothy H Patent has been writing nonfiction books for children for many years, as well as coauthoring adult nonfiction and writing for a ...
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