I knew it would happen sooner than later...My child would be taught that "non-fiction is a genre." Argh. Cough Cough. Grunt.
Non-fiction isn't a genre; it's a section in the library. In Spanish it makes more sense "no ficción." Simply put, books that are non-fiction are books that are just that, not fiction.
Fiction is one of many categories found in the library.
Fiction: Fictitious literature; comprehensively, all works of imagination; specifically, novels and romances. The office of fiction as a vehicle of instruction and moral elevation has been recognized by most if not all great educators.
- Dict. of Education. (Websters, 1913)
Books that are fiction are stories with made up characters, setting, plot, and created or written by one or two authors. That's fiction. Of course there are many fiction books based on an event or an actual person such as Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko.
In the Dewey system the books included in the non-fiction categories include more than books with information about people, animals, sports, arts, science, history etc. Books that are "not fiction" also include joke books, myths and legends, books about horror and monsters, graphic novels, cartoon books, poetry books, and more. In many libraries, a book with a collection of stories written by a particular author, or book with a collection of fictional stories with a particular theme written by different authors are located in the non-fiction section.
So...do not teach kids that non-fiction is a genre. There's no such thing. If I only had a dollar for every child who I've heard say, "non-fiction is true." When students find "Red Riding Hood" in the non-fiction section they get confused because the wolf is not "real." How often have library staff get stuck in the adult discussion about fairy tales, folk-tales, and the tranmission of cultural norms, beliefs, and morals, through oral tradition trying to explain why La Llorona is in the non-fiction section.
Teaching non-fiction as a genre confuses kids who are trying to figure out where things belong, how things can be categorized, and what makes something "true" or "false." Teach them about the different types of fiction, then help them to learn about all of the other types of exciting categories of books that are organized and easily located in print and online libraries.
Teach them where to find different topics and that information can be sorted into many different categories. Dewey Decimal is just one way books are sorted or categorized so we can find what we want quickly.
Can you tell this is my pet peeve?
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