Intro Hi everyone and welcome to Books Between - a podcast to help teachers, parents, and librarians connect kids between 8-12 to books they’ll love.  I’m your host, Corrina Allen - a teacher, a mom of a 9 and 11 year old, and struggling with some kind of rogue pollen in the air. So if I suddenly sound like the Albino from the Pit of Despair in The Princess Bride - that is why. This is Episode #51 and today I’m discussing some exceptional nonfiction reads and sharing a conversation with Wendy MacKnight, author of The Frame-up!   But first I am excited to tell you that today’s episode is sponsored by MoxieReader - a literacy app that’s like a fitness tracker for your reading life. It gives educators insights into their students’ reading lives, customized recommendations, and a way for kids to set and work toward their own reading goals in a way that is engaging and fun. My 5th graders and I have been trying it out over the past couple of weeks and they have been really been pumped up about hitting their own goals AND they’ve really liked sharing recommendations with each other. I feel like the summer is, for me anyway, the perfect time to explore something new so head over to MoxieReader.com and the use the code welovereading and try it out! A few announcements to pass along! This month’s Middle Grade at Heart book club pick is The Mad Wolf’s Daughter. We’ll have author Diane Magras on the show soon so watch out for that! In July we are reading, Just Under the Clouds and Where the Watermelons Grow is the August pick. In other news, we at MGBookVillage had SUCH as fabulous response to the #MGBookChat  Twitter chats that we’ve decided to continue them! So set a reminder for Mondays at 9pm EST  and check out #MGBookChat on Twitter for great conversations between educators, librarians, and authors about how to get great books into the hands of middle grade readers!    We have some great guest hosts lined up so far, but If you have an idea for a topic centered around supporting children’s reading lives and celebrating MG books and would like to co-host an upcoming chat, please contact us. (I’ll drop a link to more information and our upcoming schedule in the show notes.) Book Talk - Exceptional Nonfiction Reads This week’s book talk is all about nonfiction!! And I will admit, I do tend to read and book talk more fiction than nonfiction. (And I have heard from some of you about that.) But, my students and I are just coming off of a great Unit of Study all about informational texts and I wanted to share with you some of the books that have really hooked us. And as I started this list, I soon realized it’s too much for one episode. So consider this part one, and on the next show you’ll get more great recommendations! Let’s get into it with the hot reads with my fifth graders this year. All of these books had long waiting lists and complicated exchange arrangements with my kids - if you work in a classroom or library, you know what I mean. First up… The Science Comics series!! Oh my word - have these books taken off in my class!  They are graphic novel-style books that feature a character (like an animal) introducing you to their world and telling you everything you need to know about it.  For example, a favorite one in our class is Science Comics Dogs: From Predator to Protector by Andy Hirsch and it starts with an introduction by two canine scientists and then we meet Rudy, who talks directly to the reader about things like domestication, Punnett Squares, and evolution, and breeds, and the meanings of various howls and wags. We have another one called Coral Reefs: Cities of the Oceans which is told by a little yellow fish and is all about coral formation and water runoff and the effects of climate change. I will say - they are complicated and do contain sophisticated vocabulary like alleles and numerical dating vs relative dating and, well - lots of other words I can’t pronounce! But the support of the illustrations really helps