Episode 702: Historical Nonfiction Picture Books

logo for episode 702

Welcome to Reading With Libraries! Thank you for joining us on the SEVENTH SEASON of our Reader’s Advisory podcast! We have more genres to discuss, new books to recommend, and we’re so glad you’re here to join us. We always enjoy our book group podcast, and we hope you do, too! 

Our organization is the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. At CMLE, we work with all types of libraries.

At CMLE we love talking about books that appeal to all ages. This week’s genre definitely fits into that category. We’re talking historical nonfiction picture books! 

And we’re so excited to welcome returning Guest Host Kelly Groth! Kelly has talked with us about children’s books before and we’re so happy she’s able to join us again! 

We started this podcast to provide information for our library community doing Reader’s Advisory work. It’s hard to be an expert on ALL of the great books out there! So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages! This week, we took inspiration from the natural world, which has a very interesting history of its own! All these drinks are kid-friendly and the links to the recipes can be found on our show notes page. 

Ocean Water 

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup water
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp coconut extract
  • 1 liter Sprite
  • blue food coloring
  • Just add water and sugar to a glass bowl and microwave for 45 seconds. Take out and stir until sugar is dissolved. Pour into a pitcher and add coconut extract, soda and food coloring. Mix well.
  • Coconut Extract: you can typically find this near the vanilla in the baking aisle. The extract is pretty strong. For less of a coconut taste, reduce the amount of extract added. If you love coconut flavoring you can add more than what’s suggested.   Not a coconut fan? Try pineapple extract instead. 

Nonalcoholic Hurricane

  • 2 ounces orange juice
  • 2 ounces pineapple juice
  • 1 ounce passion fruit juice
  • half a lime, juiced
  • Shake all ingredients together with ice. Strain into kid friendly hurricane glasses. Garnish with a maraschino cherry and lime wedges, enjoy!


Sea Breeze (nonalcoholic)

  • 4 measures Cranberry Juice
  • 4 measures freshly squeezed Grapefruit Juice
  • Ice cubes
  • Grapefruit wedge or Lime wedge for garnish
  • Squeeze fresh grapefruit juice using a juicer or juice squeezer and set aside.
  • Measure in canned cranberry juice.
  • Pour both the juices into an ice-filled glass.
  • Stir, garnish with a grapefruit wedge and then serve.

Genre Discussion:

So we’ve got our delicious beverages, let’s learn more about historical nonfiction picture books! According to the Find Out! website, a nonfiction book tells you facts and information about the world around you. It can cover almost any topic, from wild animals to Vikings. If it’s about something that really happened, or something that really exists, it is nonfiction. 

For our discussion today, we’re adding in some additional aspects! We’ll be talking about historical people and/or events, and the books we share today will be in picture book format. 

According to ThoughtCo.com, “illustrations are as important as—or more important than—the words in telling the story. Learning to “read pictures” is an important literacy skill, and picture books can play an important part in the process of developing visual literacy.

Picture books have traditionally been 32 pages long. While most picture books still are written for younger children, a number of excellent picture books for upper elementary and middle school readers have been published.”

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion:

We have our beverages, we are familiar with this week’s genre, let’s get to the book discussion! We will give you a list of all the books we share today. You can click on any of these links to go to Amazon.com for more information. If you buy anything while you are there, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits from your purchase. Thanks in advance for helping to support the mission of CMLE – we appreciate it! 

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! It’s great to read with you each week, and to have you join us to talk about books.

Special thanks to our Guest Host Kelly.

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries!

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!