Children’s Books that Connect the Past to the Present with Back Matter

Beaming Books, 2021

Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book, written by Keila V. Dawson and illustrated by Alleanna Harris, discusses recent acts of violence against Black motorists in the back matter.

 

The Innovation Press, 2019

Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist: The True Story of a World-Traveling Bug Hunter, written by Christine Evans and illustrated by Yasmin Imamura includes a Q&A with an entomologist working in the field today.

 

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021

Code Breaker, Spy Hunter: How Elizabeth Friedman Changed the Course of Two World Wars, written by Laurie Wallmark and illustrated by Brooke Smart, includes a section on “Cryptography Today.”

 

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2021

The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London’s Poop Pollution Problem written by Colleen Paeff and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter includes a section called “Poop Pollution Today” that goes into cholera and water pollution in today’s world and offers tips for kids looking to keep their local waterways clean.

 

An Inconvenient Alphabet: Ben Franklin & Noah Webster’s Spelling Revolution written by Beth Anderson and illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley ties Ben and Noah’s story to computers, texting, spell check, and some of the spelling issues kids deal with today. It also addresses new words appearing in the English language today and how they take their place in the latest editions of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

 

Calkins Creek, 2020

Farmers Unite! Planting a Protest for Fair Prices by Lindsay H. Metcalf includes back matter that shows how little has changed for farmers since they sought parity in 1979.

 

Mario and the Hole in the Sky: How a Chemist Saved Our Planet, written by Elizabeth Rusch and illustrated by Teresa Martinez, has back matter that compares the hole in the ozone layer (a problem we solved) to the global warming of today (and problem we have the power to solve).

This is an ongoing list, so if you know of any books that should be included, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

 

Five Reasons Adults Should Read Nonfiction Picture Books

Record-setting Jeopardy winner James Holzhauer read children’s books as part of his strategy to gain knowledge, but you don’t need to be a Jeopardy dynamo to appreciate nonfiction picture books for children.

Here’s why:

1. They make exploring new subjects easy.

Ready for a new nonfiction novel, but not sure which topic you want to tackle? Read a few nonfiction picture books first. When you find a book on an intriguing topic, check for a bibliography—most nonfiction picture books have them these days—and start your adult reading with one of those vetted titles. 

2. They eliminate non-essential details.

Check out all the books I read when I was researching my forthcoming book, The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London’s Poop Pollution Problem. And I’m not alone. Children’s nonfiction authors regularly read through thousands of pages of research materials, but the books we write rarely use more than 2000 words. We take huge amounts of information, encapsulate the most important elements into as few words as possible, then turn them a story that even the most reluctant reader will find appealing. When we do our job right, the resulting book is just as interesting to adults as it is to kids.

3. The illustrations are incredible.

The quality of the artwork in today’s books for young people is astounding, and nonfiction books are no exception. Just look at Kadir Nelson’s museum-worthy masterpieces in The Undefeated, Eric Rohmann’s finely detailed oil paintings in Honey Bee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, Thao Lam’s paper cuts and collage in her wordless, semi-autobiographical book The Paper Boat: A Refugee Story, or Sophie Blackall’s gorgeous water colors in Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. Illustrators do painstaking research to get the images in their nonfiction books right—and readers of every age reap the benefits.

4. The back matter.

“Back matter,” found after the main text of the story, provides additional information on the book’s subject, and it’s a goldmine of interesting information. The unsavory aspects of a complicated story are likely to be addressed in the back matter. There might be a detailed timeline, suggested reading list, or, as I mentioned before, a bibliography. Sometimes it includes a more straightforward retelling of events covered in the story, or it may bring a historical subject up to date. The Great Stink covers events that happened before 1900, but the back matter is all about cholera and water pollution today.

5. They cover a wide variety of topics.

If you’re worried that books for children won’t offer the diverse range of subject matter adult readers require, take a look at Librarian Betsy Bird’s 2019 list of recommended nonfiction picture books. These books cover the Stonewall uprising, how plants use color to communicate, the birth of the ramen noodle, the first moon landing, the search for life on other planets, and the lives of Japanese-American illustrator Gyo Fujikawa, inventor Rube Goldberg, Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina, and surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, to name a few.

Ready to explore the amazing world of nonfiction picture books? Consider starting here:

Note: some of these lists include books for older children, but you’ll find plenty of picture books to choose from—and you might like the books for older kids, too.