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The article discusses the original research that is being done by some authors of children's nonfiction books on the subjects that they are writing about. This form of children's literature has been called "literature of inquiry" by scholar Dr. Myra Zarnowski of Queens College. It is noted that authors would typically base their books on knowledge that had already been researched and verified by others and they would not seek to make innovative claims or to speculate.

The article discusses children's nonfiction books and the changes that have taken place in the physical appearance, subject matter, and presentation of such books over time. Innovations in book printing technology have impacted the appearance of children's books. Changes in society have made it possible for there to be books about more diverse historical figures and about topics in science and human health that would not have been written about before. Another change is that the writing style used by some authors has adopted techniques from fiction.

The article offers forecasts on nonfiction books for children in the United States. The use of traditional and electronic equipment as primary sources of information for children, the advantage and disadvantage of electronic books, and the history and origin of nonfiction books are discussed. The children's book "I Can Tell by Touching," by Carolyn Otto is mentioned.

The article reviews several multicultural children's books from the year 1991 including the picture book "All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African-American Spirituals," selected and illustrated by Ashley Bryan, "Climbing Jacob's Ladder: Heroes of the Bible in African-American Spirituals," selected and edited by John Langstaff with illustrations by Ashley Bryan and "Bigmama's" written and illustrated by Donald Crews. Details are given for price and ISBN numbers.

This article presents an interview with Peter Kindersley, the co-founder and chairman of Dorling Kindersley Inc. which is a publisher of nonfiction books. He comments on the use of photography in the books. Kindersley discusses producing books on CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory) in conjunction with Microsoft. He elaborates on where the book ideas come from.