THE SPIDER LADY by Penny Parker Klosterman and WHITE LIES: HOW THE SOUTH LOST THE CIVIL WAR, THEN REWROTE THE HISTORY by Ann Bausum

For an all-nonfiction meeting we started our discussion with our picture book, The Spider Lady by Penny Parker Klosterman -- a true account of Nan Songer, a young girl whose lifetime obsession with spiders and the extraction of silk from their webs led to her becoming a World War II heroine who supplied the silk from black widow spiders' webs to be used as crosshairs in guns, bombers, periscopes and other U.S. military tools. Although we all agreed that this was a great story about Nan's perseverance and learning from experimentation via her own "scientific method," sadly the physical presentation of this picture book for older readers left a lot to be desired. Here are the things we found problematical: the very light-colored text was difficult to read; the almost monotone palette of the illustrations -- which was pleasant at first -- became tedious as it continued on and most of the pictures just showed Nan working with spiders; the little blocks (sidebars) of additional information were distracting as well as being difficult to read due to lack of contrast between their text and background; the book was too long with writing that didn't really have a 'voice'; the Back Matter which did present an Author's Note and Bibliography could have presented more detailed information as well as scientific pictures of the different types of spiders shown randomly throughout the book. SO...though spider-loving middle-schoolers or science teachers would probably be intrigued with this book as a springboard to further research on spiders and/or Nan Songer, as a general read-aloud it would not really work well, due to the myriad problems delineated above.

We had a great discussion about our (much) longer YA nonfiction book, White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History by Ann Bausum. We all agreed that although a very long read, this book presented many new facts about the Civil War and its causes and aftermath, and it was great that it was published during this time when some U.S. History is a victim of efforts to 'cover up' the so-called unpleasant parts. We liked that it focused on the stories of individual participants in the various scenarios that the author described. We appreciated the Introduction where the author explained why she wrote this book, but some readers were put off by the tone of anger shown by the writer, a white woman who grew up in the south, learning the 'Lost Cause' myths about the Civil War, etc. that were prevalent throughout her schooling who didn't realize the truth until much later -- after a great deal of extensive research -- which we also appreciated. We would have liked it even better if she had included more sources of personal recollections of people who were involved. Once again we were unhappy with many facets of the format: the very small text; the black print on grey paper and very small white print on black paper inserted in the middle of each chapter was hard to read, not to mention very distracting, and the extra inclusions of details of specific Civil War monuments throughout equally so. The Source Notes and extensive Bibliography in the back matter were excellent, but once again -- difficult to read due to even smaller type size; the inserted groups of pictures throughout had no specific connections with the actual text that we were reading at that point. Some readers also wondered whether YA readers of today would even pick up this book to read, but we felt it was a good resource that could be introduced by teachers and that it might be a stimulus for further student research. We thought it was "...an important book that maybe won't change anything," but we were glad that it had been written. 

 A note on format: It appears that more and more nonfiction books for young readers are being published to supposedly cater to their 'decreased attention spans.’ Many books now seem to try to emulate websites, with a lot of 'stuff' stuck in, in different fonts or print sizes, sidebars, etc. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, but as adult sophisticated readers, we have usually found it very distracting.