Non-fiction books can be fun for readers

When library staff members talk to younger school groups, we often check to see whether they know what “fiction” and “non-fiction” mean. Many kids have figured out that fiction means “fake” and non-fiction means “not fake.” They’ve also recognized what adults may have forgotten after years of reading non-fiction texts for papers and reports: non-fiction can be fun!

I’m not saying that if you didn’t think your eighth-grade history textbook was a barrel of laughs, you were missing something. In fact, one author, Steve Sheinken, who is now writing non-fiction books for kids and teens used to be a...