Prestwick House Releases First Non-Fiction Guide Including New Technology-Based Genres
This week, Delaware-based publishing company, Prestwick House, Inc. is proud to release its newest title, Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction: Slant, Spin, and Bias, written by former high school English teacher and English Department chair, Douglas Grudzina. This text contains a wide variety of works and accompanying exercises that will help students analyze and evaluate non-fiction — a largely neglected part of most states’ curriculum standards.
Smyrna, DE (PRWEB) January 16, 2010
This week, Delaware-based publishing company, Prestwick House, Inc. is proud to release its newest title, Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction: Slant, Spin, and Bias, written by former high school English teacher and English Department chair, Douglas Grudzina. This text contains a wide variety of works and accompanying exercises that will help students analyze and evaluate non-fiction — a largely neglected part of most states’ curriculum standards.
Currently, the English curriculum taught in high school classrooms consists mainly of fiction, but state standards and organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association encourage the inclusion of non-fiction. According to Jenkins Group Inc., nearly 42% of students will never pick up another work of fiction after completing their education. Increasing steadily over the past decade, the majority of reading in the US by adults consists of scanning non-fiction works for information.
Grudzina asserts that, “The actual genres of non-fiction have changed drastically in recent years. Whereas only a decade ago, the typical reader got his or her news from a print newspaper or magazine, now print journalism is all but obsolete; consumers are choosing to read their news online. The surge in popularity of blogs has also created non-fiction genres that never existed before. It is now more important than ever to teach readers how to judge fact from opinion and how to recognize a writer’s biases, fallacies, or outright lies.”
“Even what does remain of print non-fiction—newspaper, magazines, book-length essays—have become so polarized that it is crucial for every reader—right or left, young or old, Northern or Southern—to be able to sift through the chaff and get to the kernel. This book, hopefully, addresses not only the need for students to read more non-fiction, but also the need to teach them not to accept everything they read at face value simply because it is ‘non-fiction.’”
Created with tenth - through twelfth-grade English classes in mind, Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction covers rhetorical devices, methods of organization, and other concepts that will guide students through the process of analyzing a variety of texts. Selections represent a broad range of authors, genres, and subjects, and span several eras (including selections as current as a blog post from New York Times Bestselling author, Matthew Pearl, dated August 2009).
“You really will not find a more up-to-date and varied collection of non-fiction that actually teaches the skills required to read for information” says Grudzina.
“Most, if not all, non-fiction texts currently available might mention issues like fact versus opinion, and might assume the student knows the difference between an analysis and an interpretation, but this book makes no such assumptions. It is, quite simply, an instructional book, not merely a ‘sink-or-swim’ anthology of great authors and titles.”
Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction: Slant, Spin, and Bias (ISBN# 9781603891189) is now available both online at PrestwickHouse. com or by calling (800)-932-4593.
About Prestwick House - Founded in 1983 by a former Dover High School administrator, Prestwick House is a leader in educational publishing. With a focus on helping English teachers in grades 9-12, Prestwick House publishes the largest selection of literature teaching guides in the country, a line of classic novels, and hundreds of other educational products. Find out more at www. prestwickhouse. com.
If you’d like more information about this topic or to schedule an interview, please call Keith Bergstrom at 302/659-2070 ext 131 or E-mail Keith at keith(at)prestwickhouse(dot)com
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