NonFiction November Week 2: Book Pairings

Week 2: (November 7-11) – Book Pairing: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or another nonfiction!). It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story. Or pair a book with a podcast, film or documentary, TV show, etc. on the same topic or stories that pair together. Check out other book pairings post at What's NonFiction?

I love that often while reading I will create a list in my mind of books that are similar to the one I am reading.  I've always thought I should write these book pairings (and sometimes it is more like half a dozen books) down because when asked about similar titles, I can't always recall the many I've come up with over time.

Here are five adult non-fiction books I've paired with five middle grade fiction titles.

The Other Side of Prospect by Nicholas Davidoff is a nonfiction account of the shooting of Paul Fields and the boy arrested for the crime -and the boy who actually committed the murder who was gunned down himself.  

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes is a middle grade fiction novel about a boy who was shot by a police officer who then narrates the story watching how people are impacted by his death.

School shooting are hard to read about whether they are fiction or nonfiction.  I've read Columbine by David Cullen which goes over the details of this horrific event.  I still have This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp on my TBR, which is a young adult school shooting novel.

Jenna Bush Hager picked Solito by Javier Zamora a few months ago as her book club pick.  His journey from his home in El Salvador to the United States where he will be reunited with his parents is hard to imagine - and something he lived through at just nine years of age.  Crossing the Wire by Will Hobbs is a border crossing story for middle grade readers. Victor is fifteen when he decides to cross from Mexico to the US and his journey is also full of danger.

I have always loved a good westward expansion novel.  The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck is an adult account the move westward while Prairie Lotus provides a new look at what pioneer life was like by creating a middle grade novel with a protagonist who is Asian American and faces discrimination from the white settlers.

Paradise by Lizzie Johnson was an interesting -and devastating- account of the fire in Paradise, California, that decimated a town.  Alan Gratz's Two Degrees looks at climate change and creates three separate storylines (a California wildfire, a hurricane in Florida, and the melting of the polar icecaps) that converge in the end.  

As a middle school librarian I constantly come up with read-alikes to the adult books I am also reading and love to see how they are alike and different from each other.