NONFICTION MINUTE - The Nonfiction Minute The Nonfiction Minute

• Take a Turn at Turnip Carving

  on October 25, 2021 at 4:00 am

  Kerrie Hollihan​Teaching the Power of Wonder      ​Long before we celebrated Halloween, Celtic people in the British Isles honored the dead during Samhain (which we pronounce “SOW-ren”). Some scholars think that Samhain was a Celtic version of New Year’s Eve. It was a holiday filled with ritual.  Folks believed that in late fall, the veil between the worl [...]

• Dracula:  Even Scarier Than You Think

  on October 23, 2021 at 4:00 am

  Jan AdkinsThe Explainer General ​    The real Dracula  didn’t drink blood or sleep in a coffin. He was not a count but an honorable, well-educated warlord. And much, much scarier than the movie Dracula.      As a Knight of the Dragon Society his father, Vlad II, was called Dracul (“dragon”) . When Vlad III was born in 1431, he was called “ [...]

• When a Jet Wore a Costume

  on October 23, 2021 at 4:00 am

  Amy Nathan Stories that Surprise and Inspire Two weeks before Halloween in 1944, a small jet fighter plane was parked on an Ohio airfield. The plane was wearing a kind of costume. It had fake propellers attached to the front of its wings. Was this jet getting dressed up so it could zoom off trick-or-treating at air [...]

• Mary Makes a Monster

  on October 23, 2021 at 4:00 am

  Cheryl Harness She’s historical!      You know how it is: old campfire stories, interesting things you’re doing or seeing or hearing about—they get all mixed up in your dreams and your stories. That’s how it was for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. One night in 1816, in Switzerland, when there wasn’t anything on TV (because it wasn’t invented yet), she a [...]

• Rot Rocks!

  on October 23, 2021 at 4:00 am

  David M. Schwartz The amazing, engaging, math exponent ​       ​'Tis the season. The rotting season.    You thought Halloween was full of ghosts, goblins and ghouls? Well, wait until the post-Halloween season. This is when your Jack O' Lantern begins its ghoulish decline. It starts as a pumpkin and it ends as a heap of goo. This is scary!     [...]