Introducing the GROG’s Greatest HIts: Happy 10th Year Anniversary! by Kathy Halsey

2014 to 2024!  Happy 10th year anniversary to the Grog. Woohoo! Let the celebration begin.  

Throughout this year the GROG team will be featuring a “blast to the past" with our most popular posts through the years. 

Look for these gems and other surprises to be revealed as we celebrate 2024.

• How about a book giveaway?
• An AMA (Ask Me Anything) chat?
• A critique?

Stay tuned every Wednesday for our weekly posts! Let's dance through 2024 in writer style!

Not Gangnam style or Tiktok style, but writer style!

A GROG Greatest Hit: Nonfiction vs. Informational Fiction: A Former School Librarian's View with NF Maven Melissa Stewart

Waaaay back in 2020 before we all added N-95 face masks to our fashion ensembles, there were burning questions about nonfiction: 

• What is nonfiction? 
• What is creative nonfiction? 
• What is informational fiction? 
• Are these terms interchangeable? 

Melissa Stewart and I got together and had a confab about it. Can you believe we are still discussing the intricacies of nonfiction in 2024? And like Back to the Future, we mentioned NF Fest in that post and it's coming back in February 2024, too! 

NFFEST begins February 1. NFFEST.COM

In our 2020, post Melissa and I gave pointers on how to tell if a book is fiction or nonfiction by reviewing how librarians catalog books as well as sharing examples and an exercise useful for writers, teachers, and students on classifying a book as informational fiction or nonfiction. Check that post out here.

Fast forward to 2024, and Melissa Stewart and Marlene Correia’s 2021 book 5 KInds of Nonfiction we mentioned then is becoming the preferred way for nonfiction writers and school librarians to categorize nonfiction.

Drum roll, please. . .and the 5 categories are Active, Browseable, Traditional, Expository Literature and Narrative nonfiction. Informational fiction still has “made-up parts" and creative nonfiction is synonymous with unique ways of crafting all types of nonfiction.

I'm using this book now to decide what type of NF my WIP should be.

A Look Back and a Look Forward 

        Then: NESCBWI               Now: NCTE Columbus OH

To win a prize of an Ask Me Anything 20 minute Zoom chat or Ask Infowoman: A Library Consult from Kathy, share your look back to 2020 or 2014 and look forward to 2024 with us in the comments. They don't have to be fancy, either. (I did mine in Canva.) If you haven't done so yet, please subscribe to our blog in the blue box at the top right side of this site! Thank you!