MO Day #19 Marta Magellan Explores Hybrids

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Hybrids: Fiction/Nonfiction Mentor Texts by Marta Magellan

As a Rate Your Story judge, I have been seeing a good number of hybrid submissions. What is a hybrid in the children’s book world, exactly? It is a book mixing fact and fiction while it teaches the reader amazing truths in a delightful, humorous, and playful way. And why not? For the picture book crowd, making reading and learning fun is a priority, and play is an essential part of learning. Although a book of straight factual nonfiction works well for older children, if you are four to eight years old, your tastes likely lean toward the funny, the silly, the fantastic. But some hybrids are written for older eight-to-eleven-year-old children because some complex subjects are better served with a topping of fun.

Why blend fiction and nonfiction? Carol Hinz of Lerner Books says there is magic in the intersection of information with imagination. Engaging characters, play, and storytelling, as well as facts, merge for a complete reading and learning experience.

I find that when I present my own books to very young children, I prefer to read The Nutty Little Vulture , a hybrid with accurate illustrations of the various types of African vultures. The book is all about the gruesome but necessary eating habits of this much-maligned bird. The fictional part follows a little vulture as he meets several species and discovers how they help keep the Earth clean.

Even when presenting to older children, I like to choose Python Catchers, Saving the Everglades, a hybrid in which I used a cartoon marsh rabbit and a wood stork to narrate the rather terrifying story of Burmese pythons who have been gobbling up the mammals and birds in the Everglades. The cartoon characters’ narration is intended to make the facts less disturbing, while still describing the disaster of exotic pets released into the wild.

Fortunately, many such hybrid books exist, meant to impart knowledge and facts about a subject in the most engaging way possible—through fiction. Here are several picture books which have successfully mixed fiction with nonfiction.

Love, Agnes: Postcards from an Octopus by Irene Latham and illustrated by Thea Baker is about an octopus. Not a real octopus, mind you, but one that is based on a real species, a giant Pacific octopus. Agnes the octopus finds a postcard and begins a correspondence with a variety of creatures, both under and above water, including a boy on a pier and even her eggs. While enjoying the fiction, readers will learn about the octopus life cycle. Its backmatter is filled with facts about this most interesting animal. Millbrook Press

From My Window by Otávio Júnior is a bit of sociology, a bit of geography, a bit of diversity in a short, bouncy text. It is a poetic story celebrating an urban neighborhood and its corresponding lifestyle, inspired by the author’s childhood in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Although I, too, was born and lived in Rio de Janeiro, the view from my townhouse window was quite different from his. Through the child narrator’s eyes, the favela is filled with fun, music and games. But sometimes there are “sounds that make me very sad” keeping the narrator from going to school or playing ball outside—a veiled reference to the violence the children sometimes encounter. Mostly, though, it is a joyous romp through the good days, and the illustrations by Vanina Starkoff fills the reader in on the sparse text. Barefoot Books

Winnie the True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M. Walker. Yes, it does say “the true story,” but you will find it in the fiction section of the library because there are conversations in the book which the author invented to bring the reader closer to the characters, now long gone. Many know author A. A. Milne’s son Christopher Robin had a stuffed animal collection, but there was an actual bear named Winnie in the London Zoo who was the original inspiration for Christopher’s collection. The watercolor illustrations by Jonathan D. Voss provide an old-fashioned depiction of the actual times of this biographical account. Henry Holt & Co.

Drum Dream Girl How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music by Newbery Honor winner Margarita Engle. This biography is written in the form of a poem. Listed as fiction by the publisher, it is based on the true story of a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s traditional taboo against female drummers. The lyrical language coupled with bold, colorful illustrations by Rafael López make following the drum dream girl as she dreams, pounds, and taps her way through the island of music a truly delightful experience. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing

Bio: Marta Magellan was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and has lived in Miami, Florida since the age of seven. She taught Composition, Creative Writing, and Survey of Children’s Literature at Miami Dade College, where she was a full professor and award-winning adviser to Miambiance, the campus literary arts magazine. She has written travel articles for magazines and newspapers but her love for children and profound interest in nature has produced several award-winning children’s books about wild animals, many in collaboration with her brother, Mauro Magellan, an illustrator who has produced work for Albert Whitman, Pelican Press, Scholastic, among others. Marta has also written children's books for the educational market and travel articles on exotic places. She has traveled abroad extensively, and now lives in Miami with her husband James Gersing.