STICKING TO THE FACTS

General guidelines for distinguishing fake news from the more reality-based sort.

Without overburdening his middle-grade audience with emphatic warnings or frightening scenarios, Craigie presents a set of commonsense approaches to take toward questionable claims or reports—specifically those found online. After distinguishing between simple “misinformation” and more intentional “disinformation,” he lays out 10 ways that wary readers can tell the two apart, from investigating the author of the item and the host and history of the website where it appears to double-checking its date (to make sure it’s not April 1, if nothing else). Some of Craigie’s suggestions, such as reading a problematic story or entry all the way to the end rather than just going by its headline, aren’t commonly found in similar guides. Better yet, he expands his scope beyond practical techniques by, for instance, cautioning against falling into an informational “silo” that would limit exposure to different ideas and explaining why it’s so much healthier, intellectually speaking, to be a skeptic than a cynic. Though his book is light on specific examples of fake news, he does include a few examples, mostly for their entertainment value (“POPE ENDORSES TRUMP”). Sutradhar likewise livens up interspersed glimpses of racially diverse young information consumers with images of a caped super-librarian and monkeys swarming up a skyscraper.

Savvy, low-key, and lit occasionally by glints of humor.