ABSTRACT
Non-fiction kinds of reading can demand just as much work from the imagination as does fiction. If teachers browse through the children's section of a bookshop or in a school library they are unlikely to find many books with mature and relentless non-chronological or non-narrative text. Non-chronological texts are organized according to the inherent logic of a subject, with the hierarchical ordering this implies. Narrative is not the only way in which even the youngest children order and relate to experience. Books with recipes and books with instructions for making things are part of the early years collection. The dynamic view of a child constructing its world contrasted with the ‘behaviourists’ picture of the child as a relatively passive responder to stimuli. So writers of children’s non-fiction do best when they think of young readers as active and questioning.
