How do you explain a genre to students when it is can sometimes be subjective?  What is the difference between mystery and suspense?  Science fiction and fantasy?  When you look at individual titles, the lines can be well defined or can sometimes get blurry.  So when I’ve already read a book in question and have a difficult time deciding, how can I expect the students to sort it out?

OPAC you say?  Subject headings?  This IS what I teach my students to use.  But there is one annually assigned genre (assigned by our language and reading department to all 7th and 8th graders) which is impossible to identify via a collective subject heading – Realistic Fiction. 

Definitions of Realistic Fiction vary:

• Stories and novels that mimic the real world.
• Fictional stories that take place in modern time, right here and now.  The characters are involved in events that could really happen.
• Realistic fiction is stories of life in the real world (the world as we know it) and governed by the laws of the natural world as we understand them. Realistic fiction intends to provide a believable verisimilitude or plausibility to life as we experience it.
• A book is considered realistic fiction if events in the story did not really happen but could have. Fantastic elements such as magic, aliens, talking animals, or ridiculous exaggerations move a book out of this category and into other genres. Biographies or true stories, even if written in novelized form, are considered non-fiction.

To find Realistic Fiction you have to consult a variety of subject headings.  One library solved the problem with this guide:  http://www.uiowa.edu/~crl/infohawk/help/contemporaryfiction.htm  But notice their caveat – there are hundreds of other possibilities!  Expecting students to use hundreds of subject headings which may or may not occur to them is unreasonable.

Since I am a school library one of my main priorities must be supporting curriculum.  Because there is an annual assignment to read from the genre of Realistic Fiction, and because locating Realistic Fiction is obnoxiously difficult, my former solution was to pull displays of Realistic Fiction books for the students.  But that is a time-consuming nightmare which just repeats itself each year….  So this year I decided I would label the spines. 

I hesitate to put genre labels on everything because, as a library teacher I want the students to learn to locate Science Fiction, Fantasy, or the many other genres by using subject headings and the OPAC.  But when student needs are not being met, I know the priority!  Unfortunately I discovered that none of the vendors sell a genre label for Realistic Fiction, so I created my own!  A simple “RF” in large letters with smaller print below reading “Realistic Fiction”.  (The small print is for the user… How do they know what RF means? … and how many times do I want to explain it?  Using the library should not be an exercise is confusion for the user with only library staff knowing the secrets!)

I was able to get our 4-6 fiction section labeled during the school year, but the last day of school this June found me in the 7-8 fiction section labeling Realistic Fiction.  It was a cummulative task, unfortunately, as combing through the shelves to identify Realistic Fiction led to weeding.  Weeding led to a big pile on my aide’s desk.  And both of us stayed longer than we originally intended on the last day of school.

The Realistic Fiction project was time consuming and not convenient.  The paperwork on my desk was untouched and I would return AFTER school was out, as usual, to finish that work.  But labeling the books is easiest just after inventory when they are all on the shelf!  And my aide and I both love a good job well done.  (As she is the one who shelves the books she was estatic about the space my weeding created.  I continue to be thankful for aides who get excited about labeling and weeding books!) 

But the best part of this Realistic Fiction labeling project?  It is DONE!

Resources on Realistic Fiction… in case you want to tackle this project in your library:

Varied overviews of realistic fiction as a genre: 

• http://www.southernct.edu/~brownm/Grea.html
• http://www.mindspring.com/~stct42/edu/cont_his.html

Resources for Realistic Fiction: http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/readingliterature/genres/realistic/realisticfiction.htm

Examples/bibliographies of Realistic Fiction:

• http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/childrens/realbib.html
• http://www.literatureplace.com/bookfolios/info/core_realistic_fiction.asp

For a good overview on all genre definitions:  http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/SusannaTaylor/genre_definitions.htm