To recap: In May, I posted in the wonderful NF Fest group requesting examples of real pitches for expository nonfiction books. Several authors submitted pitches for both picture book and middle grade nonfiction projects. You’ll find my analysis of the expository picture book pitches in my May 2024 post here. I meant to follow up immediately with the middle grade post, but – SUMMER! Thanks for bearing with me; I’m sure you can relate.

I’m back today (finally!) with an analysis of successful expository nonfiction, middle-grade pitches. What’s a pitch, you ask? A pitch is a short paragraph typically close to the beginning of a query letter that’s meant to entice or intrigue an agent or editor and hook them into reading the full manuscript (for a picture book) or the proposal (for a middle grade or young adult project). For narrative nonfiction (and fiction books) the pitch paragraph often includes an idea of the character, their goal, the stakes, and the takeaway or lesson learned from the story. 

But pitches for expository books are a little trickier. We don’t have a main character for the reader to connect with. Yet we still need to pique the agent or editor’s interest, offer a surprising new take on the topic, and show why and how the book will connect with the target audience. 

In the samples below, you’ll see two different approaches. Stephanie Gibeault has broken out her pitch and the specifics about her book (word count, age range, comp titles) into two separate paragraphs. Annette Whipple opted to include all of that information in a single paragraph. The bottom line – both worked! Big thanks to contributing authors Stephanie Gibeault and Annette Whipple for their generosity in sharing their pitches so we can all learn from them.

Here’s the pitch

Example 1

BATTLE OF THE SENSES: DOG VERSUS HUMAN pits dogs against humans in a head-to-head competition in the arenas of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. This 25,000-word book combines the fun yet in-depth scientific style of Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science behind Your Favorite Monsters by Carlyn Beccia (Carolrhoda Books, 2019) with the experimental approach of Dog Science Unleashed by Jodi Wheeler-Toppen (National Geographic Kids, 2018).

“Do dogs see in black and white? What are whiskers for? Why do dogs eat garbage? This book will fill you in on all the amazing details of how dogs sense the world. But it will also tell you how your senses stack up against a dog’s. Who can hear higher-pitched sounds? Who has a more sensitive tongue? And whose nose can smell the faintest scents? In a head to head competition, full of fun experiments and activities, you will discover who wins the battle of the senses.”

–the pitch for MAKING SENSE OF DOG SENSES: HOW OUR FURRY FRIENDS EXPERIENCE THE WORLD  by Stephanie Gibeault, illustrated by Raz Latif (Owl Kids), which landed her an agent

Example 2 

“Fifty-two devotions inspire curious children, ages 8-12, to get wild about their faith in WILD WONDERS: ANIMAL DEVOTIONS FOR KIDS. Did you know pebble toads curl into a ball and roll away from predators, wolf spiders carry their young on their backs, and sloths move slowly to conserve energy? WILD WONDERS displays God’s magnificent creatures and creatively draws life applications from them. Practical faith challenges and hands-on activities help readers think more about personal faith and animals. WILD WONDERS combines Christianity and science while fitting in with Tyndale’s devotionals such as the Did You Know Devotions and The One Year Devos for Animal Lovers.”

–pitch for QUIRKY CRITTER DEVOTIONS: 52 WILD WONDERS FOR KIDS by Annette Whipple (Tyndale Books, 2024)

Example 3

“Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion is a chapter-by-chapter children’s guide to the Little House book series. It includes activities, historical and biographical information, pioneer terms, and more for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s best-selling series. The book helps Little House fans make connections between the pioneer world and their own lives. It can be compared to Carolyn Strom Collin and Christina Wyss Eriksson’s The World of Little House (HarperCollins) though Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion explores the book series in greater detail and provides more thinking and hands-on activities to immerse the reader in the pioneer world of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

–pitch for THE LAURA INGALLS WILDER COMPANION: A CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER GUIDE by Annette Whipple (Chicago Review Press, 2020)

What makes these pitches winners

These three pitches have a few things in common. They:

Demonstrate a clear concept and unique hooks

Each pitch presents a clear, focused concept with a unique hook to draw readers in. For example, in MAKING SENSE OF DOG SENSES, Gibeault compares the senses of a beloved family pet (dogs) to our own senses. This approach is packed with kid appeal and offers readers a new way of viewing dog senses. Plus we get a sense of the book’s compare and contrast structure.

In QUIRKY CRITTER DEVOTIONS, Whipple uses examples of God’s amazing and wacky creatures to inspire appreciation for Him and his word. Combining STEM and Christianity is an innovative approach. And THE LAURA INGALLS WILDER COMPANION leverages a popular book series to cover an important piece of American history. In each case, the book (and the pitch) offer a new way of looking at material that may already have been covered in other books.

Use rhetorical questions to entice readers

You may have heard the advice that authors should avoid rhetorical questions in their pitches. I certainly have. While I think that’s good advice for narrative pitches, I don’t think it holds true for expository pitches. In a narrative pitch, there is always an implied question, so we don’t have to state explicit questions. That implied question is: “Will the main character reach their goal/save the day, etc.?” We don’t have that in an expository pitch.

Therefore, it’s common in expository pitches to reach out to the reader with a rhetorical question or a series of rhetorical questions that will spark their curiosity. This often happens in the very first lines of the pitch, as in MAKING SENSE OF DOG SENSES begins: “Do dogs see in black and white? What are whiskers for?” Meanwhile, in the QUIRKY CRITTER DEVOTIONS pitch, Whipple asks, “Did you know pebble toads curl into a ball and roll away from predators…?” Though Whipple’s LAURA INGALLS WILDER pitch doesn’t use rhetorical questions, the pitch shows how the book taps into readers’ curiosity about how the Little House books reflect and connect to real life on the prairie.

Tout educational value

Each pitch also focuses on the educational value of the book for young readers. They assure agents and editors that these books are much more than just fun reads. For nonfiction especially, the school and library markets are critical, so demonstrating educational value becomes more important. Notice how all three pitches mention educational components like hands-on activities, experiments, and faith challenges.

The pitch is just the start

Just like the pitch starts the play in baseball, the pitch is just the first step in selling your book. That pitch alone doesn’t sell the project. It is quickly followed up by additional information about the expected age group, word count, and comp titles, as you can see in each example above. These can be in a separate paragraph (which is what Gibeault did) or in the same paragraph, as in Whipple’s queries. 

Plus, when it comes to a middle grade book, the query letter is just one part of the proposal, which can be thought of as a pitch package. Proposals typically include sample chapters, an outline, bibliography, analyses of the potential markets for the book, and marketing overview. You can read my 2017 Sub It Club post on the elements of a nonfiction book proposal here.

The bottom line is while a strong pitch paragraph is crucial to grabbing an agent or editor’s attention, it’s not the only selling point of a project. But you certainly want to make that pitch as pithy as you can.