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School Library Media Activities Monthly/Volume XXI, Number 6/February 2005

Historical Fiction

by JoAnn Vergona Krapp

"My teacher says I have to take out a book on the Civil War." Sound familiar? At least once a year, teachers generally request a historical fiction assignment. Bare facts make dry reading but historical fiction, set in an actual time period with plausible dialogue and credible characters, is more palatable to youngsters.

Blending history and literature is a challenging genre. Authors must use details to create the intended sense of time, place, and emotion without details overpowering the story. To this end, authors of historical fiction hope that understanding and empathizing with the past helps children feel a continuity of life. The legitimacy of this genre was reinforced in 1981 when noted author Scott O'Dell, a Newbery winner for his 1960 Is-land of the Blue Dolphins , established the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

The following discussion represents the most widely requested historical periods of study for intermediate and upper elementary readers.

The Middle Ages

Three prominent authors tell tales for upper elementary readers, set in medieval England, spanning a fifty-year publication period. In 1949, author/illustrator Marguerite DeAngeli published her Newbery-winning The Door in the Wall . While his nobleman father is away at war, young Robin falls ill from plague; but despite his handicap, he bravely helps to save his city from an invading army. Karen Cushman describes a year in the life of Catherine, Called Birdy , the daughter of a knight in 1290, revealing an independent young lady during a time when the expected decorum of women was obedience and servility. The prolific Avi earned a Newbery for Crispin: Cross of Lead , replete with medieval lore, politics, and traditions, as twelve-year-old “Asta's son” struggles to sur-vive as a penniless orphan running from the deceitful Lord of the Manor who has branded him a thief.

Clyde Robert Bulla, known for simple stories focusing on one character's important step toward maturity, introduces younger readers to medieval time in The Sword in the Tree .

Colonial America/American Revolution

The period of history encompassing the Ameri-can Colonial movement and the ensuing Ameri-can Revolution has produced a significant body of historical fiction, written at different readabil-ity levels. Clyde Robert Bulla, Nathaniel Benchley, Alice Dalgliesh, Wilma Pitchford Hays, and Elizabeth Coatsworth are among those who introduce this era to younger readers.

In Alice Dalgliesh's The Courage of Sarah Noble , based on a true incident in 1707, eight-year-old Sarah accompanies her father to the wilderness while he builds a home. When he leaves to bring back their family, Sarah is left alone with an Indian family. The bravery of another real heroine, Temperence, is depicted in Patricia Lee Gauch's This Time, Tempe Wick , when she saves her horse Bonnie from becoming supper for the hungry quartered troops for-aging for food in 1791.

Robert Lawson uses a horse and a mouse to give readers an inside look at two famous colonial figures: Paul Revere's horse Sherry (Sche-herazade) in Mr. Revere and I and Ben Franklin's mouse Amos, who lives in Ben's old fur cap, in Ben and Me .

Elizabeth Speare presents a spirited young woman in The Witch of Blackbird Pond . Orphaned and sent to live with relatives in Puritan Connecticut, Kit's rebellious nature is barely tolerable, but, when she befriends an old Quaker woman suspected of witchcraft, she too is sentenced to trial. Beverly Lee's The Secret of Van Rink's Cellar revolves around the plot of Major Andre and Benedict Arnold to capture West Point for the British. When the two children of a seamstress for a wealthy Englishwoman snoop around the cellar and discover their mother is a spy for General Washington, they help carry out her work.

Westward Movement/Frontier America

The expansion of the United States westward across the plains and prairies captured the imagination of the writers of historical fiction. Two strangers to the dust and remoteness of the prairie dominate Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall and Pam Conrad's Prairie Songs . Sarah, a mail-order bride from New England, becomes stepmother to Caleb and Anna who worry that she will not adjust to this new land. In Prairie Songs , the young narrator witnesses the mental breakdown of a fragile newcomer to the frontier, but gains a new appreciation for her own family.

The mid-1800s are the setting for three stories where children meet unexpected challenges. In Avi's The Barn , a nine-year-old boy returns to Oregon from boarding school to care for his sick father. Caddie Woodlawn is Carol Ryrie Brink's recollection of her spunky grandmother who, at twelve years old, helps her family pre-serve friendly relations with the Indians on the Wisconsin border. The lighthearted tone in much of the book counteracts the seriousness of most books about frontier life. In Cynthia DeFelice's The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker , an orphaned twelve-year-old becomes apprentice to a kindly doctor in rural New England where he is shocked at the superstitions that the countryfolk believe true.

Upper elementary readers will marvel at the dangerous seafaring exploits faced by two thirteen-year-olds. In Paula Fox's The Slave Dance , Jessie's ocean voyage is not voluntary. He is kid-napped from his Southern home and bound for the African coast for one purpose only—to “dance the slaves,” keeping their muscles strong until they are sold. A Newbery winner, Fox's novel depicts the human degradation associated with slavery. Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle describes Charlotte's journey aboard ship as the only passenger traveling from her English boarding school to her home in Providence. Caught in the middle of a feud between a ruthless captain and rebellious crew, Charlotte herself is put on trial.

As westward expansion continued into the 1900s, so also did tales of frontier living. With the publication of Little House on the Prairie , Laura Ingalls Wilder introduced the first of nine widely read books chronicling the lives of the Ingalls family as they settled in Wisconsin in 1932 and re-settled across the Midwest in 1943.

Civil War Era

Literature inbued with emotion constitutes the many novels of the Civil War, as characters show courage at home and on the war front. In Patricia Lee Gauch's Thunder at Gettysburg , based on an eyewitness account, young Tillie is caught in the crossfire during the Battle of Gettysburg when she helps a neighbor care for his two small children. Ann Warren Turner portrays a resolute thirteen-year-old who uses his drum to bolster soldiers' spirits in Drummer Boy: Marching to the Civil War . Frederick Monjo employs the diary of General Grant's son to describe the forty-seven-day siege of the Battle of Vicksburg in The Vicksburg Veteran .

Monjo and others use the fictional approach to the slavery is-sue. In The Drinking Gourd , Tommy hides a runaway slave in the family's barn, only to learn that his father is part of the Underground Railroad. Andrea Pinkney's Silent Thunder describes the war's effect on the lives of two siblings as slaves on a Virginia plantation. Patricia Polacco uses picture book format to deliver a gripping tale of her Yankee great-great-grandfather's rescue by a black Confederate soldier in Pink and Say .

World War Two

With equal intensity, authors describe the experiences of children and families the disruption of lives during War Two. Michelle Magorian brings to light the evacuation of English children from war-ravaged cities sent to live with f lies in rural areas. In Goodbye, Mr. Tom a boy evacuated from London forms a relationship with his reluctant caretaker.

Desertion—cowardice or realism?— occupies the central theme of Downing Hahn's Stepping on the Cracks. When the town bully's brother goes AWOL, two friends whose brothers are fighting in Europe hide him but question the consequences of war. Similarly, a lonely twelve-year-old Jewish girl hides and befriends a German soldier when he escapes en route to a POW camp in Arkansas. Summer of My German Soldier is Bette Greene's powerful story of human feelings during a time teeming with anger and prejudice.

Claire Huchet Bishop's eleven-year-old Janet describes the true account of twenty fifth graders and their teacher in occupied France who hide ten Jewish children whose parents were killed by Nazis. In Twenty and Ten , courage and kind-ness overcome personal peril. Still another tale of determination is Lois Lowry's Newbery winner Number the Stars . Set in occupied Copenhagen where the Danish Resistance smuggled Danish Jews to neutral Sweden, ten-year-old Annemarie helps her best friend and family escape.

Works Cited in Text

• Avi. Crispin, Cross of Lead . Hyperion, 2002.
• Avi. The Barn . Orchard, 1994.
• Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle . Orchard, 1992.
• Bishop, Claire Huchet. Twenty and Ten . Viking. 1952.
• Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn . Macmillan, 1935, 1973.
• Bulla, Clyde Robert. The Sword in the Tree . Crowell, 1956.
• Conrad, Pam. Prairie Songs . Harper & Row, 1985.
• Cushman, Karen. Catherine, Called Birdy . Clarion, 1994.
• Dalgliesh, Alice. The Courage of Sarah Noble . Scribner, 1954.
• DeAnglei, Marguerite. Door in the Wall . Doubleday, 1949.
• DeFelice, Cynthia. The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker .Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
• Fox, Paula. The Slave Dancer . Bradbury, 1973.
• Gauch, Patricia Lee. This Time, Tempe Wick . Coward, 1955.
• Gauch, Patricia Lee. Thunder at Gettysburg . Putnam, 1975, 1990.
• Greene, Bette. Summer of My German Soldier . Dial, 1974.
• Hahn, Mary Downing. Stepping on the Cracks . Clarion, 1991.
• Lawson, Robert. Ben and Me . Little, Brown, 1951.
• Lawson, Robert. Mr. Revere and I . Little, Brown, 1953.
• Lee, Beverly. The Secret of Van Rink's Cellar . Lerner, 1979.
• Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars . Houghton, 1989.
• MacLachan, Patricia. Sarah, Plain and Tall . Harper, 1985.
• Magorian, Michelle. Goodbye. Mr. Tom . Harper, 1970.
• Monjo, Frederick. The Drinking Gourd . Harper, 1970.
• Monjo, Frederick. The Vicksburg Veteran . Simon, 1971.
• Pinkney, Andrea. Silent Thunder . Hyperion, 1999.
• Polacco, Patricia. Pink and Say . Philomel, 1994. Speare, Elizabeth. The Witch of Blackbird Pond . Houghton, 1958.
• Turner, Ann Warren. Drummer Boy: Marching to the Civil War . HarperCollins, 1998. Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie . Harper, 1932.

Additional Recommended Titles

• Avi. Midnight Magic . Scholastic, 1999.
• Avi. The Secret School . Harcourt, 2001.
• Avi. Who Was that Masked Man, Anyway? Avon/Camelot, 1992.
• Benchley, Nathaniel. Sam the Minuteman . Harper, 1969.
• Bulla, Clyde Robert. John Billington, Friend of Squanto . Crowell, 1956.
• Bulla, Clyde Robert. Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims . Harper, 1954.
• Bulla, Clyde Robert. Viking Adventure . Crowell, 1963.
• Byars, Betsy. Trouble River . Penguin, 1969.
• Collier, James, and Christopher Collier. My Brother Sam Is Dead . Macmillan, 1974.
• Cushman, Karen. Matilda Bone . Clarion, 2000.
• Degens, T. Transport 7-41R . Viking, 1974.
• DeJong, Meindert. The House of Sixty Fathers . Harper, 1965.
• Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl . Doubleday, 1967.
• Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust . Scholastic, 1997.
• Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils . Scott, 1964.
• Kerr, Judith. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit . Putnam, 1972.
• Moskin, Marietta. Day of the Blizzard . Scholastic, 1978.
• O'Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins . Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
• Reiss, Johanna. The Upstairs Room . Crowell, 1972.
• Taylor, Mildred. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry . Puffin, 1976.

Additional Recommended Authors

• John and Patricia Beatty
• William O. Steele
• Elizabeth Coatsworth
• Rosemary Sutcliffe
• Esther Forbes
• Theodore Taylor
• James Forman
• Henry Treece
• Jean Fritz
• Brinton Turkle
• Erick Haugaard
• Leonard Wibberly

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