Paying Tribute to 4 Nonfiction Authors as Thanks-Giving

We TeachingAuthors are celebrating three week of Thanksgiving to focus on our favorite authors.

Nonfiction books are better today than ever before.  For the most part, gone today is the silly fictional dialogue that filled “nonfiction” books of my childhood.  Now nonfiction books are historically accurate and tell complex, true stories in interesting ways. 

I am thankful for many contemporary nonfiction authors.  Below I am going to name a few of them along with their books that I particularly enjoyed and why.

Sally M. Walker

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland
Secrets of A Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H. L. Hunley

Walker’s book showed me how to science and history work could together to tell a fascinating story of both. 

Susan Campbell Bartoletti 

Growing up in Coal Country

Kids on Strike

Bartoletti’s books showed me how to deal with stories that are not as well known as others, and how powerful photographs can be in telling a story.

Russell Freedman

Lincoln: A Photobiography

Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

Freeman’s books showed me to think outside the box about how to write about history.

Jim Murphy

A Great Fire 

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

Murphy’s books showed me how tell the timeline of a story. 

These authors and others have produced bodies of work that are amazing.  I am thankful their books are in libraries. 

Carla Killough McClafferty

Don't forget to enter our book giveaway!  Enter to win a copy of TOBY by Hazel Mitchell.