Lack of Non fiction books for children

[sittinginthesun]

Interesting letter...

m.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/28/children-nonfiction-books-libraries?cat=books&type=article

Well ds never fails to find non-fiction books.

He's 5yo and currently has 10 WWII/fighter pilot books from the library, spent a book token today on a book about the history of the RAF, bought a book about the Titanic two weeks ago at the school book fair, and has currently a book about dinosaurs as his school library book, and one of his (two) reading books from school is about computers.

I would imagine that the internet provides a major disincentive for publishers to invest in non-fiction. Certainly, whenever my children are asked to research a subject for homework, they are given a string of websites to look at ... and give me a very withering look when I suggest that we head down to the library and find a good book on the subject. So I reckon the authors have a point.

And I must admit that we don't buy very many non-fiction books ... although we do have a fair number that DH and I had as children, which are still going strong!

My DC have ASD, we have 100s on non-fiction books on a variety of obsessions interests and have never had a problem finding them for all ages

I had one reluctant reader who found his reading pleasure in non fiction. I never had any trouble finding library books for him on all sorts of subjects.
That was when he was 6 or 7 years old.
My experience of secondary school age children is different though. They will either read adult non fiction or, for research , use the net.
Our local secondary school has just got rid of the entire non fiction part of the school library as it was truly never used.
Dusty out of date atlases and encyclopaedias are no good to anyone.

Sorry I just posted and ran - DH read the letter, and mentioned it to me, as we'd been discussing DS1's love of non fiction.

Mind you, he is currently stuck on the Horrible History/Science/Maths books.