Top Five Favorite Non-Fiction Books

At the ILF Annual Conference last year I sat in a session about the Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award and the topic came up on how to book talk non-fiction to teens. One librarian (and I'm sorry I forgot who said this, but you're brilliant!) suggested telling teens to think of non-fiction as "reality fiction." Yes!!! I still contemplate renaming the non-fiction section in my library to this day. Seriously, good non-fiction presents the real stuff in a way that pulls you in like a novel! Here are my top five favorites that I've read recently!

1) The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of An American Team's Journey To Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics (young reader's version) by Daniel James Brown

The ultimate rags to riches story of an underdog US rowing team that took the world by surprise at the 1936 Berlin games. History fans will love this story with the backdrop of Depression-era America and pre WWII Europe.

2) The V-Word edited by Amber J. Keyser

 I laughed. I cried. I learned. What a powerful book for teens, especially young women!

Check out my review here!

3) Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand

Because I'm a WWII addict! And this story is just inspiring. 

4) The Family Romanov by Candace Flemming

My college had such a great history program! One of my favorite upper level classes I took was on Russian history. There's more to Russian than Ivan the Terrible and the legend of Anastasia! This book about Russia's last royal family and life in Imperial Russia during the early 20th century reads like a great drama!

5) Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

A book that combines history and music? Literally two of my favorite things! Before college, my knowledge of the Siege of Leningrad was the movie Enemy at the Gates (still a great movie if somewhat inaccurate haha studied history sometimes ruins Hollywood...but hey, Jude Law!) but this book was just wow! This is the story of a three year long battle over a city that left a more than a million civilians dead and a composer's piece that became both rally cry and memorial.