Helping Students Like Nonfiction After All


(This is long but worth it, I hope. Stay with me.)

A best friend and I recently concluded that, at age twentysomething, a switch has randomly flipped in our brains, and we now love non-fiction.

This revelation is a big deal, coming from us. She works in publishing; I'm an English teacher. We both have English degrees. We both have deep appreciation for fiction in all centuries. And even though we LIKE non-fiction topics (and read books on teaching pedagogy and feminism and psychology), we used to approach non-fiction like broccoli - good for you, but not particularly enjoyable (unless there's a reward, like ranch dressing...)

Our broccoli attitude about non-fiction is also the reason why our kids don't like it.