How to Locate Suitable Non-Fiction

by Jack Farrell

Trustee, Mammoth Unified School District

In recent articles I have already made the case for including non-fiction in a student’s summer reading regime. Where do you find suitable non-fiction? I would simply recommend taking a walk in the stacks of any public library. I recently put this to the test and visited the Mammoth Public Library. I started in the Juvenile Non-Fiction room on the 2^nd floor. A few books immediately caught my eye: “How Things Work” (Juv. 600) from the Nature Company, edited by Alison Porter and Eryl Davies, with the intriguing section headings [“Using the Elements,” “Machines,” “Communications”]. There were individual chapters on “Wind Power” and “The Ways of Water.” I also located “Journey Through Inventions” (Juv. 608) by Ron Taylor. This book covers Stone Age Inventions all the way to Space Exploration. And how about this one: “100 Greatest Medical Discoveries” (Juv. 610.9)? The book begins with Trepanning, which it describes thusly: “Our prehistoric ancestors believed that boring a hole through the skull, an operation known as ‘trepanning,’ would help to cure illness. For most of human history, people thought that pain and illness were caused by evil spirits. Witch doctors and shamans were employed to drive away the spirits, but, if that failed, they might try trepanning.” The book marches through time with more contemporary discoveries, like CAT scans, Heart Transplants and Microsurgery.

I next moved to the adult non-fiction section of the library, also on the 2^nd floor. I quickly located “Our Natural History: the Lessons of Lewis and Clark” (508.78) by Daniel B. Botkin. I noted especially this early passage: “Americans have a special fascination with wilderness. In part, it is a fascination with the land as seen by the pioneers and explorers, a land of romantic appeal, open and free, uncluttered in our imagination by the middens of main street, clean and pure, spotless and without poverty; democratic, without status; a place where all are equal before the challenges of grizzly bears and mountain blizzards (p. 7).” That second sentence is laden with clauses and 59 words in length. It is a challenge, but one students should welcome. I moved on to other books that caught my eye: “The Dating Game: One Man’s Search for the Age of the Earth” (551.701) by Cherry Lewis; “Degrees of Kelvin: a Tale of Genius, Invention, and Tragedy” (530.092) by David Lindley, which tells the fascinating tale of the great 19^th century scientist Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, of absolute zero fame; and “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History” (560) by our most famous science writer Stephen Jay Gould, which posits that this region of the Canadian Rockies at 8,000 ft., an ancient sea, contains more fossils than live in all our modern oceans.

Lastly I stumbled across “The Guns of August” (940.3) by Barbara Tuchman, a book I had always wanted to read. It is considered by many the best treatise on the origins of the Great War (World War I). I checked it out; so there was something in it for me as well.

If these books do not interest you, there are hundreds more that may. I invite you to take a walk in the stacks. And take your son or daughter with you.