Forensic Trade Books

By Author: allan
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To explore students' experiences with reading alternative texts, I asked students to complete a questionnaire that assessed their reactions to self-selected forensics trade books drawn from the school library, which was also a public library. Their books included forensic fiction, graphic novels, and forensic nonfiction. The questions focused on the nature of the book, their reasons for selecting it, their reactions to it, and a description of the forensic content. My analysis of the responses showed that two thirds of the students (63%, including 79% of the boys) enjoyed reading their self-selected fiction or nonfiction forensics-related books. Students selected these books based on recommendations from friends or family members, by familiarity with the authors, by descriptions on the book jackets, or because the book was based on a popular TV program such as CSL. Replica Watches

Most students (58%) reported that their book caused them to become more interested in forensics. For example, a girl who did not typically like to read, Gina, reported that she was reading To the Last ...
... Breath by Carlton Stowers, the nonfiction story of the murder of a young child. She remarked, "I haven't been able to put it down...this book made me want to read more and more forensic-related books." Jane read Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark. She described how as she read this fictional story of a brutal kidnapping she paid close attention to the descriptions of fingerprints and their recovery process by remembering the methods that she had learned in class. She read the book in two nights to find out what happened because she was intrigued by how the detectives found the murderers by using inductive reasoning. Mary read the fiction book Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks, reporting that this book made her more interested in forensics because of the way the clues were presented as two people tried to frame a friend for murder. She said that this story inspired her to want to learn more about fiber analysis during the labs in class.

The students who enjoyed these books took pleasure in the ways in which the concepts in the books related to the forensic techniques and processes that they learned in class. They made comments such as the following:

"The book reinforced the concepts of blood samples and fingerprints."
"I remembered doing the crime scene investigation in class and I could therefore conclude things about the scene by what the author said."
"It [the book] made me think more about what scientists do when they arrive at a crime scene." "Now that I have a better understanding of forensics I am more interested [in reading forensics books]."

Those who did not enjoy their books remarked that the presentation of forensics in these texts was uninteresting and unexciting, particularly in comparison to other media texts. They made comments such as the following: IWC Replica Watches

"Crime scene investigations [in books] are not as action packed as the show CSI likes to show."
"The process of forensics seems incredibly tedious and dull."

"The book sort of bored me...in the TV shows you can see the action happening and better understand the high tech machinery used along with documents and the lingo."