Invented Dialogue and the Conundrum of the Picture Book Biography

You know, it’s not that I’m a big nonfiction reader or advocate in particular. It’s just the nature of children’s librarianship in this day and age. You simply cannot work in the field without encountering nonfiction and, as a result, sometimes you end up with granite hard opinions about the form. Take me, for example. My trajectory in matters of nonfictiony nonfictioness (why yes, I was an English major, why do you ask?) proceeded accordingly:

Fear nonfiction based on the books I recall from...