National Non-Fiction November
National Non-Fiction November is the Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ annual celebration of all things factual. Born out of National Non-Fiction Day, the brain child of Adam Lancaster during his years as Chair, the whole month now celebrates all those readers that have a passion for information and facts and attempts to bring non fiction celebration in line with those of fiction.
Why not celebrate National Non-Fiction November by arranging an author visit or exploring one of the many types of non-fiction books for children and young people, any time during the month of November? You could team up with a library, local museum or organisation and build a session around books on a particular topic, such as local history or famous people.
National Non-Fiction November 2023
Wonderful Water
Our theme this year is ‘Wonderful Water’ and our competition has been inspired by ‘Sea Change: Save the Ocean’, edited by Tobias Hickey of the International Centre for the Picture Book in Society at Worcester University. Published by Otter-Barry Books, this is a collection of original postcards and messages from 50 illustrators across the world, working to celebrate and protect the precious life in our oceans.
To enter, children are invited to create their own postcard. There are three age group categories: 5-7 (30-40 words) 8-10 (40-60 words) 11-12 (60-100 words) Each will be judged on their originality, creativity and presentation, according to age. More information is available here along with the competition rules
Last year’s NNFN Coordinator, Chris Routh, will be kicking off our FCBG Blog Posts this month which will be full of interesting articles from authors and publishers and will feature a number of exciting giveaways. Books with a focus on the ‘Wonderful Water’ theme will also be reviewed on other blogs over the month.
We are hoping that bookshops will also get involved, sharing their favourite non-fiction titles on social media. You can follow what is happening on Twitter (@FCBGNews) and Instagram (@fcgb_news) using the hashtags #NNFN23 and #WonderfulWater
We are running a fantastic competition for 5-12s with the support of Otter Barry Books. For full details and the competition rules, see
To support book groups, a booklet of ideas compiled by Zoe Toft has been updated.
Take a look at the Wonderful Water booklist for some ideas of great watery titles to inspire you.
In addition to the water themed list, a new Non-fiction booklist will be published in November, sharing some of the fabulous information texts available to inspire, inform and entertain young readers.
A one-day Non-fiction Conference is being held in Somerset with a publishers’ exhibition and presentations, talks from Isabel Thomas, Andy Seed and Nicola Davies, and a bookshop provided by Reading Rocks. Tickets for members are £10 and non-members £20- more information is available from Somerset CBG.
We want to express our huge thanks to the publishers who generously support NNFN.
