New non fiction!

Here's what I found in some new non-fiction this week.

The first one is a biography called "Martin Luther King: The Peaceful Warrior" by Ed Clayton.  It was originally published in 1964.  The story is well written and doesn't seem to be anachronistic.  It gives a nice overview of Dr. King's life and some of the people who influenced him.  The artwork is warm and interesting.  I was a little fuzzy on what had been updated, since I hadn't read the initial work but overall it was a nice biography of Dr. King.  I read this one as an e-book from Netgalley so it will be interesting to see this as an actual book-to see the placement of the artwork and and how that all fits together.  I liked the fact that the book is written by people who actually knew Dr. King and how they interpreted the events of his life.  

The second one is also a biography.  It's about Andrew Carnegie.  It's called "The Man Who Loved Libraries" by Andrew Larsen.  It tells the story of Andrew Carnegie, who was born in a rural part of Scotland to a fairly poor family.  The family did work hard and eventually emigrated to the US where Andrew worked hard too.  However, he had help along the way, something he never forgot.  So after he made millions in the steel industry, he spent the later years of his life dedicated to philanthropic causes.  He helped to start Carnegie-Mellon University and gave a huge amount of money to the New York Public Library.  It's a nice story to give kids some background about an important historical figure like Carnegie and to perhaps start a conversation about how someone who has a lot of money might feel that they have an obligation to share that wealth.  

The last one is poetry, which in my library is non-fiction, but it feels like it could be a narrative story told in verse.  It's called "Can I Touch Your Hair?" by Charles Waters and Irene Latham.  The story is about two fifth graders, Charles and Irene that end up working together on a poetry project.  It's not really by choice, they both would rather have been working with someone else.  But it turns out, they have a lot more in common than they thought.  They agree that they will each write poems about different topics and the topics are presented in a two page illustrated spread.  The kids share their feelings about a variety of topics-church, shoes, hair, friends.  It turns out that even though there is a lot about them that is different, there is a lot that is the same too.  I think this would be an excellent on to use as a mentor text-the poetry flows so easily, the kids will be inspired to write poems just like them.  The story is also a great one-how people view others who are different from them and how they might not be as different as they thought.  I'm going to put this one on my list to order RIGHT NOW.