humor

Some peo­ple think non­fic­tion is dry and bor­ing. How can facts be fun, right? WRONG! Humor in non­fic­tion not only gets and keeps read­ers engaged, it can also help them retain the infor­ma­tion longer. My fel­low writ­ers of non­fic­tion for kids (on the NFforKids Yahoo group and on Twit­ter) and I have put togeth­er a list of our favorite FUNNY non­fic­tion titles for kids. Here’s what we came up with, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

• Just the Right Size, Extreme Ani­mals (and oth­ers) by Nico­la Davies
• How to Get Orga­nized With­out Los­ing It by Janet S. Fox
• How To Do Home­work With­out Throw­ing Up by Trevor Romain
• Man­ners Mash-Up: A Goofy Guide to Good Behav­ior by Tedd Arnold and others
• What To Do About Alice by Bar­bara Kerley
• The Bash­er books (Physics, Peri­od­ic Table, Biol­o­gy, etc.) by Simon Bash­er
• Kath­leen Krull’s Lives of the… series 
• You Would­n’t Have Want­ed To Be A… series by var­i­ous authors
• Fin­gers, Forks, & Chop­sticks by Patri­cia Lauber 
• Poop Hap­pened by Sarah Albee
• Amer­i­ca­pe­dia by Jodi Lynn Ander­son, Daniel Ehren­haft, Andisheh Nouraee 
• How They Croaked by Geor­gia Bragg 
• Bugs and Bugsi­cles: Insects in the Win­ter by Amy Hansen
• What to Expect When You’re Expect­ing… series by Brid­get Heos
• It’s Spit-acu­lar: The Secrets of Sali­va by Melis­sa Stew­art 
• The Truth About Poop by Susan E. Goodman
• Gee Whiz by Susan E. Goodman
• See How They Run by Susan E. Goodman
• Fartiste by Kath­leen Krull (which I blogged about here)
• Do Pigs Have Stripes? by Melanie Walsh
• Bub­ble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bay­rock
• Ant, Ant, Ant, An Insect Chant by April Pul­ley Sayre
• What’s So Fun­ny? Mak­ing Sense of Humor by Don­na M. Jackson

This is just a sam­pling of our favorites. Do you have any to add? Please let us know in the comments!
I found it inter­est­ing that often the humor is pri­mar­i­ly in the illus­tra­tions, with the text play­ing it fair­ly straight. In fact, in many cas­es it’s only the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the two that tick­les your fun­ny bone. In oth­ers, the humor is mild (a smile rather than a bel­ly laugh) or is just hint­ed at rather than being an explic­it joke. Some­times, the top­ic itself is pret­ty fun­ny, but the text is fair­ly seri­ous. Giv­en how much kids love to read humor, I won­der if that’s all just coin­ci­dence, or if humor just isn’t as tol­er­at­ed in non­fic­tion texts, or maybe non­fic­tion writ­ers just don’t have a sense of humor (I’m sure not buy­ing that last one!). Thoughts?