Confirmation bias is a big term that isn’t commonly known to most high school kids. It’s at the root of social media, the rise of fake news, and is the enemy of independent thought and critical thinking. Getting young audiences to know when something that they hear or read about online is fake news can be challenging to say the least. It becomes a near impossibility when you factor in the ‘tall tales’ stage that upper elementary students enter. And this doesn’t even consider the politicization that the term ‘fake news’ garnered when it was by President Donald Trump. Half-truths, omission of facts, distractions or simply not acknowledging situations have always existed. Killer Underwear Invasion!, How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories is by Elise Gravel. It’s a playful illustrated book, graphic novel that introduces the concept of not believing everything that you hear to those upper elementary students who desperately need it.
I say desperately because of the sheer number of fourth and fifth graders who are apt to believe any message, as long as they discover it. It’s that same insidious issue that us 80’s and 90’s kids had in wanting to be the messenger. You were the first to discover the cool band. It was you that told the neighborhood about the cute new student moving into the neighborhood. You wanted to be the one who told everyone that the teacher in block two really screwed up by saying that thing, but it wasn’t your class, so the other kids got the glory.
Confirmation bias plays into that to an extent but this book is all about fake news. It examines the topic in a way that appeals to those kids aged eight and up. However, most importantly, it explains the idea of fake news or a false narrative to them in a manner that they’ll be able to understand and enjoy.
Killer Underwear Invasion! is broken up into six chapters and covers the topic from soup to nuts. Clever kids in fifth grade will utter “fake news” when teachers make a correction in class, but do they really know what it means? I would guess that they don’t, but are merely saying something to be clever so that other kids will laugh. Having said that, there are dozens of instances of fake school news or fake playground news daily, but the kids aren’t likely to flag that content.
What is Fake News? Why do people make it, why is it bad, why do we believe it and how to separate it, from the real news are the topics to some of the other chapters. It’s challenging to get our fifth grader to understand that not everything he may hear or see on a friend’s device aren’t true.
For example, I just left the office to where he was watching YouTube for Kids. There was some tripe on there where these KIDS FOUND A T-REX IN THEIR BACKYARD!* My son called me into the room to demonstrate what they had found. Before he could utter a word I asked him if he really thought that these children had become part-time paleontologists and found that in their backyard. He sheepishly said no, but that is an example of wanting to be the first to tell someone, regardless of how wrong and incorrect they know it to be.
Killer Underwear Invasion! is a book that kids will understand. The illustrations are simple, funny, and effective. There are a couple of instances where the text will be too challenging for those fourth-graders to really comprehend without teacher or adult help, and mainly it’s that large concept of confirmation bias. At the bare minimum, you older readers will be able to handily use that phrase when you see it-and you will see it multiple times a day. Killer Underwear Invasion! takes the rumor of killer underwear run amuck and unleashes it to a social media world all too willing to share the mangy story that hasn’t been verified. It’s silly but just silly enough to where kids will read it and realize that they need to watch their tongue before they share something.
Killer Underwear Invasion! How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories is by Elise Gravel and available on Chronicle Books.
*For example, fake news usually uses all caps, might have a celebrity or egg profile sharing it, or have a stream 100% dedicated to said topic. That, plus it just doesn’t pass the smell test.
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