QUESTION: Non-Fiction Texts for Lit Circles?

[steve lynch]

Before I went nuts with the school budget and purchased a number of books for our middle school, I was wondering if people knew of non-fiction texts that would be successful for high-performing middle school students around the topics of food systems (think Fast Food Nation, Food Inc., etc) and media literacy and technology (think Sherri Turkle but suitable for younger crowds). 

I want kids to do literature circles (small groups of four or so kids, each group reading a different text) around non-fiction texts and those are the two themes I wanted to organize my curriculum around. Titles of books and texts that you think are suitable for really smart and motivated middle-schoolers around those topics would be great! Thanks for any help! 

[Stergios Botzakis]

Twinkie Deconstructed is a fun book that I think could work. It's about where each ingredient from the label comes from.

A media book is a little harder for me to think of.

[steve lynch]

glorious! thank you for the great idea--i'm completely intrigued!

[Susan Nichols]

I like the kid version of Fast Food Nation, Chew on This:

http://www.amazon.com/Chew-This-Everything-Dont-About/dp/0618593942...

Michael Pollan might also have some good food-related books for kids/teens.

In terms of consumerism, I highly recommend Get Real: What Kind of World Are You Buying? by Mara Rockliff: http://mararockliff.com/getreal.thebook.html

Last year my honors 6th graders worked in threes and fours on each chapter and produced a persuasive essay on their topic which we put together on this wiki:

http://jamsconsumerawareness.wikispaces.com/

I also like The Story of Stuff Project: http://www.storyofstuff.org/ which I also think has a book to go along with it.

[Susan Nichols]

Oh, and I do things the very cheap way; I buy one copy of the book and cut it apart so each group can have one chapter at a time.  That's what I did with Get Real.  It also helped the groups stay focused on their topics and kept the other topics a surprise for their presentations at the end.