HIT:Explaning Nonfiction, Part 4

[Tracey Donaldson <Bookluv@AOL.COM>]

And, finally, part 4.......again thank you all!
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As far as fairy tales, legends, tall tales, etc. I explain to all my
students in Gr. 1-5 that these are very special stories, many very old with
no known author, etc. and  many originated in other countries.  Through
these stories we learn about the culture/heritage of these people and are
cataloged in the 300's Social Science.  Many don't catch on at first but
with reminders  they do.  As far as the 800's--I just say they're a special
type of writing/literature.  Not very profound but I hope this helps.
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I tell my students that fairy tales are so old that now one
knows who made them upand that they now have decome apart of
the culture and that is why they are in the Social Science
are.  In the olden days all fictions was a part of literature
until it became too crownd and it was taken out.  All that was
left was the poetry and plays.
I also don't allow my students to use fairy tales as a
definition of fiction, it helps reduce the confusion.
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My explanation about fairy tales, folk tales, and such is that they are part
of the oral tradition of a people.

When they began to be developed hundreds of years ago, they played an
important part in the history and culture of a people.  We keep them in the
398's now, so they can all be found in one spot place in the library, which
allows for easier access, rather than having them scattered all through the
fiction.

Fiction books all have a place in the 800's - depending on the author's
country of origin (American, British, French, etc.)  But just imagine how
cumbersome it would be to find fiction books if they were all assigned Dewey
numbers and shelved in the 800's!  It makes much better sense to pull them out
as we all do, and just file them as "fiction."
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Try explaining that originally all fiction books were classed in Dewey,
but because of the bulk of the fiction most stories/novels were
"Pulled-out" of Dewey & given a separate section.  I believe that we
really shouldn't refer to Dewey classes as non-fiction -- we should
distinguish between the two types as fiction and Dewey Decimal.
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I've recently shelved all the reference apart from general encyclopedias in
the main classified sequence. So often before students forgot to look in
the reference for subject specific books. Now they are all together, and
while there is sometimes disappointment that they are not allowed to take
all the books out, at least they've found them.

I also try to avoid talking about 'non-fiction' as it seems really odd to
define something in terms of what it is not. So I talk about 'information'
books. Now I must get to grips with the fact that defining 'fiction' as
books from the imagination ignores the fact that I put the poetry with the
'information' books!
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One of the things I did was to change my definition of nonfiction.  I
looked the word nonfiction up in the dictionary and chose to use
information or facts as simple definitions for lower elem.  The problem
I have always faced was that teachers chose to use the word "true" with
nonfiction.  And that does make it difficult to teach students about
nonfiction.  Good luck.
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I explain the 398.2s in this way: The 300s cover culture, government, and
people in some way. The folktales and fairy tales that are marked 398.2 are
so marked because they are part of our cultural history. They've been around
since before written history in some form or another so they have become
part of our shared knowledge. Since these stories were passed from parent to
child for so many generations, we can't really point to one author as having
written it (even though we can point to people like Andersen and the Grimms
as people who wrote them down and published them in print form for the first
time).
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Good point.  As I have been teaching the Dewey system the last couple of
years the same thought occurred to me.  What I decided to tell my students (
4th grade)this year is that when Mr. Dewey devised his classification system
he created one in which all books could reside.  Thus fiction could be
placed in the lit section but most libraries have chosen not to do so.  That
led to a discussion of what other section in the Dewey numbers a person
might expect to find "fiction."  I have tried to quite using the term
"non-fiction" and use the term "Dewey" or "number" section.  In rereading
your post I guess that I would teach fiction and non-fiction completely
separately from the fiction and the Dewey number books.  If this helps I
know that the faiary and folk tales are in the 300's becuase they are
considered paut of the culture of a society.
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If you haven't heard this already, let me tell you that I was taught that
Fairy Tales and the like are in the non-fiction section because they
reflect a way of life from other cultures.  They taught lessons and were
used to instill good behavior in children.  That is what I tell my
students.  As for poetry, I've never questioned that one, so let us know.
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I just tell them that non-fiction is exactly that--not fiction
books!  Fiction books are located in a separate section and are
either many chapters or just one long piece of fiction.
Everything else goes into the "not" fiction section of the
library.
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There was a discussion a while ago about the 398.2 issue.  I think the
consensus was that they were folktales, part of our society, rather than
pure fiction.  As far as poetry and literature are concerned, technically
"fiction" is a made-up category and all works should be classified in the
800s.
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In your discussion of the 800's .... Cyndi's response to you was exactly what
I was taught back in the 60's in cataloging class.  That all fiction books are
supposed to have numbers but because of the large size of the collection some
have received other designations for ease of use.  Just like biographies which
could be cataloged into the subject areas instead of being in a BIO section.

I, too, tell my classes that all the books could have numbers but .....
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Actually, I think I read the explanation in an LM_Net post, or some Dewey
Internet articel.  The fact is, Dewey had planned for everything to have a
classification, including fiction and that is why poetry, fables, short
stories, literature have dewey numbers.  When discussing fiction with all
my classes I tell them that fiction would be found in the 800 class if it
hadn;t been decided to separate it because it was such a huge class of
material.
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Tracey Donaldson, LMS
Tioga Hills Elementary
Apalachin, NY
bookluv@aol.com

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