Amelia Lost

What associations come to your mind, when someone mentions non-fiction? For me, non-fiction reading activities look like the following: reading to find out information, sometimes in order to complete a project, or dipping in and out of a book on a favorite subject. As a teacher, I remember noticing that someone always seems to be surprised, should it be mentioned that kids like non-fiction. As a primary school student more than twenty years ago, I remember reaching for thick encyclopedia volumes and reading all about my favorite subjects: natural phenomena, geology, and other countries, especially enjoying the colorful info graphics and photographs. In fact, reading encyclopedia volumes was somewhat a popular thing to do: the volumes of The Charlie Brown Encyclopedia seemed to fly off the shelves. Because of their innate curiosity to learn about the world around them, I believe many children are drawn to non-fiction.

Many non-fiction titles make sure they are colorful and brimming with pictures, in order to attract young readers. Dorling-Kindersly has some excellent full-colour information books on all sorts of subjects. Some feature humor and light-hearted fun, such as the Horrible Histories books. In yet another sub-genre, authors showcase non-fiction subjects as they are experienced by young narrators on wild adventures. I'm thinking of the Magic School Bus series, where the narrator and his classmates go off on field trips to impossible places, such as inside the human body, or to the solar system.

Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart, is unlike any of these. For one thing, it is all in black and white. While there are pictures, these  are black and white. And while there are nuggets of information presented in text boxes, these are in grayscale, and mostly text. Aesthetically, this works well for the book, as the telling of a historical event, especially with the early 20th century 'Americanesque' letterings. Still, a young reader (the book is recommended for those between 8 and 12) would need to be really interested, in order to get through all the 110 black, white and gray pages of this book.

Amelia Lost is also unique in that it doesn't quite read like a typical non-fiction book in that it is not one best enjoyed by dipping in and out of. Quite the contrary, I found this to be a book that read like a narrative, fueled by the momentum of a gripping plot and fascinating characters. Like I would have done when reading a novel, I found myself analyzing Amelia's intentions and motivations, drawing my own conclusions about her character, and linking character flaws to significant plot events. While the reader's stance in approaching a non-fiction book is often in expecting to be told or shown information, here the reader would be likely to find himself, as I did, led perhaps unknowingly into the role of mystery-solver instead. I didn't want to put the book down till page 110. This momentum is in part built by the dual, interlocking narrative of Amelia Earhart's life, and the account of her disappearance, that very event that has arrested the imagination of people for years. It is not usual for a non-fiction book for children to blur the boundaries between non-fiction and narratives the way I think Amelia Lost has done so skillfully. For this alone, I feel that it well deserves the Cybils award for non-fiction it won in 2011. 

Young readers already interested in aviation, notable women in history, or even famous people, more generally, would have no trouble getting into flow with Amelia Lost. For other young readers, would the mystery surrounding Amelia's disappearance be fascinating enough to lure them in? I don't know about that, but it sure was enough for the little girl in me. 

I wonder...Writing this entry made me wonder about the kinds of non-fiction books children would themselves choose to honor. To satisfy my curiosity somewhat, I turned to the IRA's Children's Choice award list of past winners. In 2011, children liked: Heart-stopping Roller Coasters (Goldfish), Goliath: Hero of the Great Baltimore Fire (Howell), books from the Peculiar Pets series, and Adrian Peterson (Sandler). More books to check out!