The mini-theme of this HB100 special issue is Nonfiction & Horn Book History, and this issue is a form of nonfiction in itself. Here people share their reminiscences and recollections alongside articles focused more directly on the topic. Nonfiction seems so ­straightforward — i.e., not fiction — but is intriguing in its complexity. Over the past century the category has evolved, as have our definitions, understandings, and assumptions (are primary and secondary sources required? invented dialogue, yea or nay?); and as our access to information has expanded.

Our very first issue’s nonfiction recommendations leaned historical: Man Before History: A Short Account of ­Prehistoric Times by Mary E. Boyle, A Child’s History of the World by V. M. Hillyer, America — The Great ­Adventure: A History from the Discovery to the ­Present Day by George Philip Krapp; and b­iographical: Girlhood Stories of Famous Women by Katherine Dunlap Cather. Issue 2 featured expanded reviews of Hillyer and Krapp (“Two Important New Books of History”) as well as a sports booklist (“the following list of good books covers many forms of athletics”) and human body recommendation (Yourself and Your Body by Wilfred T. Grenfell: “This book treats a vital subject in an unusual and fascinating way and will be a great help to many children and parents.”)

Nonfiction may be the contemporary Book Reviews section with the widest range of ages, topics, formats, and approaches. Within it you’ll find everything from picture-book biographies…to detailed tomes about historical events…to STEAM for all ages. For glimpses into the process behind these widely varied books, see the Writer’s Page columns in this issue by Duncan, Sheinkin, and Stone.

There are young readers’ adaptations of existing adult books (e.g., Lee and Soontornvat, reviewed in this issue), and we’re also seeing more graphic nonfiction, especially graphic memoirs, alongside this century’s meteoric rise of graphic novels (read Sylvie Kantorovitz’s March/April 2022 article). See the work of many of our “Blowing the Horn” contributors for examples of the breadth of what nonfiction can be.

The Horn Book Guide started in 1989, quickly became a repository for reviews of series nonfiction (think sturdily bound series on each of the fifty U.S. states’ birds, flowers, and flags), which the Magazine didn’t cover but school librarians, especially, loved. Well beyond books that are “recommended for reports” (faint praise from the Guide) and serve as dry reference material, much of nonfiction is now synonymous with both informational and pleasure reading.

The question of what “counts” as nonfiction is more complicated than it sounds, without trading on “alternative facts.” Yes, a book in which a talking animal teaches science includes some invented elements, but where (in our magazine’s pages, or in a library) might a reader interested in those scientific facts go looking for that book? What about a memoir whose author acknowledges the shortcomings of their own memory? Or a biography that includes some speculation out of necessity because of limited records — especially when the availability of records reflects who was or wasn’t in power at a given time? We hashed out many of these questions in the May/June 2020 issue’s article “How Do You Solve a Problem like Nonfiction?” And for a deeper dive into that historical-record question, see the recording of “Fact-Finding and Black History,” a February 2024 School Library Journal webcast panel hosted by our own articles development editor, Marva Anne Hinton.

Over the century, the Horn Book has published many excellent articles on nonfiction — including our March/April 2011 special issue on nonfiction, “Fact, Fiction, and In Between” — that are fascinating both as snapshots of the times and for approaches to more timeless questions and themes. Visit hbook.com/page/horn-book-centennial to read a selection by contributors including Augusta Baker, Russell Freedman, Candace Fleming, Carole Boston Weatherford, and many others.

Whose stories have been told (over and over), and by whom, and whose have been left out? What scientific advances have occurred to posit mass extinction of the dinosaurs, demote Pluto, and cement belief in climate change? What would we think today about the nonfiction titles we recommended in our first issue — and what will nonfiction readers in a ­hundred years think of ours today? Nonfiction is so much more complex than the name implies…and that’s the truth.

From the May/June 2024 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Our Centennial. For more Horn Book centennial coverage, click here.

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