Fiction Vs NonFiction

 

At the end of this month, I will be participating on a panel of authors from Scholastic discussing the value of non-fiction, titled: Three Reasons Kids Need to Read More Non-Fiction. During this discussion, I will talk about my debut historical biography, Unlawful Orders.  Preparing for this has set me thinking about my most recent books, some of their differences and similarities, and why both fiction and non fiction are valuable.  I'm putting down some of the things I have come up with for both genres.   

Fiction helps young readers learn empathy for others. Empathy enables building social connections that can prevent bullying, help children make friends, and ready them to receive help from others. Non-fiction helps nurture a young person’s “insatiable curiosity,” a term that had to be invented to describe the way the very young ask a thousand questions a day. Okay, maybe the number is really closer to a hundred, but you get the picture. They wake up each day with a desire to know more, and good non-fiction can be a fertilizer to keep their blossoming curiosity to from withering as they grow older. In the words of Albert Einstein: 

“I have no special talent – I am only passionately curious.”

I have entered both worlds in my writing career. A few years ago I penned Courage, middle grade fiction written to encourage empathy by immersing them in the lives of kids coping with a variety of issues. Among them are a child dealing with the recent death of a parent from cancer, and one who is just trying to live a normal life despite having sickle cell anemia, a chronic and sometimes debilitating illness. One child is homeless and friendless, another is feels he has to be an overachiever to meet the expectations of his adopted parents. Yet another kid is best friends with the daughter of the Chicago policeman who sent her father to prison. All these young people come together in a story about finding the strength to forgive and grant others second chances. I wrote Courage as a modern day version of the prodigal son story, in hopes it would entertain young people, and at the same time encourage readers to forgive others who have hurt them.

Unlawful Orders, my upcoming nonfiction book (Oct 2022), shares the true story of a family that deserves to be everyone’s role model. I love superhero stories, and tales of wonder-kids who save their dystopian world. But there is something extra in a stories about real human beings in real locations handling real events. And the Williams family saved lives and changed all our futures in more ways than one.

The book centers around one member of the family, James Buchanan WIlliams, “JB” who grew up in a small town attending a one-room schoolhouse - taught by his mother. She was the first African American to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico. How the school’s English department building eventually came to be named after her is a story all its own.

From there the story takes readers on a journey through the history of the twentieth century, with bits of engineering, aerodynamics, psychology, and medical science thrown in. After growing up on the family farm, JB went off to fight for his country during World War II. He and a hundred other Tuskegee Airmen staged what came to be known as the Freeman Field mutiny, an act of disobedience against a superior officer’s order that could have cost him his life, but that preserved his dignity.

After the war, JB headed back to college to obtain both an MD degree and a Master of Science in surgery, before moving to Chicago. The book tells how he became the chief of surgery in a major hospital while working to expand healthcare for the poor across the United States. His efforts included a trip to Washington DC and to lobby President John F. Kennedy for an end of discrimination in medical schools and hospitals.
He also lived long enough to accept a special invitation to attend President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Dr. Williams and his two brothers not only worked to advance the field of medicine, they raised families whose members continue to excel in the fields of healthcare and of education to this day.

If you are interested, the webinar panel discussion will take place on Wednesday, April 27th at 2:00pm EST. I do not have access information yet, but I should have that soon and will update this post. I will also update my website with the information once I have it.