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Writing nonfiction for today's media-savvy children means that writers must be prepared to compete with a multitude of visual pleasures. Nonfiction often must read like fiction in order to capture a child's interest and keep it. Just as fiction must be written with an awareness of the realities of modern life for children, nonfiction must also adhere to this standard. Finding a new angle on a subject, backed up with scrupulous research and personal enthusiasm, can result in a nonfiction book or article that reads like a great story. One of the best tools available to assist in this is, ironically, the Internet. Research on the Internet can provide basic material along with contact information for experts on a given topic. How successfully this material is utilized is up to the writer.

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Paper: Writing Nonfiction for Children in Today's Technological Society

Lee Ann Howlett has been a medical librarian for over 25 years with an emphasis on serials. She contributed a chapter to the textbook "E-Serials Collection Management" published by Haworth Press. She has also published numerous book reviews and non-fiction articles for children in magazines including "Children's Digest, Hopscotch, U.S. Kids" and "Cobblestone". Her work was included in "Best of the Children's Market" published in 2000.