Tag: historical fiction

New Historical Fiction Connects Readers to Children of the Past

If you’re looking for a newly published historical fiction book for your readers, ages 8-12, I recommend A Kidnapping in Kentucky 1776 by Elizabeth Raum (2022, Chicken Scratch Books).

Raum’s novel brings to life a three-day historical event through the perspectives of Jemima Boone and John Gass when Jemima and two of her friends were captured by Indians near the fledgling settlement of Fort Boonesborough.

The adventure alternates between Jemima, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Daniel Boone, and John, the twelve-year-old son of one of the other settlers.

Although historical children often had to take on responsibilities at younger ages than modern children do, Raum does a good job connecting Jemima’s and John’s fears and desires to ones current young readers also have.

Both characters deal with the consequences of their actions and face their fears.

Jemima realizes her selfishness has put her friends in danger and takes initiative to save them.

John wants to be recognized as a grown up (what twelve year old doesn’t, even now?), but learns he must prove his maturity.

Raum includes a glossary, a long list of sources, a timeline, and question-and-answer pages in her back matter.

She explains where the story and the facts differ, describes the tensions between the settlers and the Shawnee and Cherokee tribes over the land in Kentucky, and places the Kentucky situation in its context of the Revolutionary War between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain.

All in all, she tells a fascinating story, portrays the conflict between the Indians and settlers with balance and understanding, creates age-appropriate characters for their time, as well as writing an age-appropriate novel for modern children.

Although Raum has authored 150 published children’s books, this is her first novel with Chicken Scratch Books, a newer publishing company with the mission is to bring quality, agenda-free stories to children, ages 8-12.

Chicken Scratch Books also offers an online course (not just a guide, but a multi-week course) for young readers and an analysis course for writers with each of its books.

I’m impressed by Chicken Scratch Books and plan to read more the publishing company’s books. Please check out the company’s website.

For more information about Raum and her other books, visit ElizabethRaumBooks.com.

Had you previously heard of Jemima or John? Have you read other books by Elizabeth Raum or Chicken Scratch Books? Which ones?

Elizabeth Goudge Brings Childlike Wonder to Christmas and Epiphany

One of my favorite books I read during the past Christmas and current Epiphany season was I Saw Three Ships By Elizabeth Goudge (published in 1969).

This short novel is set in a seaside English village during the Napoleonic Era and features a young girl experiencing her first Christmas after the death of her parents. She faces the holiday with her childlike wonder and faith intact and affects the adults around her in a delightful way.

This is considered a children’s novel, but I found it to be a great encouragement for adults to keep believing Jesus with a childlike faith.

Check out this enlightening essay by Deborah Gaudin about I See Three Ships at The Elizabeth Goudge Society Website. However, she mentions a different illustrator for the British edition than the American edition I have pictured above has.

Have you read this story in either British or American edition? What did you think of it?

Fantasy or History? THE FALL OF GONDOLIN by J.R.R. Tolkien

I’m picky about the fantasy stories I like, but I love J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. He did such a effective job in his world-building that I suspend my disbelief. His Middle Earth stories feel like reading history.

As a young man Tolkien began creating a couple new languages, and then he began writing poems and stories for the elves who would speak these languages. Many years later he wrote a children’s story set in this fictional world, yet in a much later time period than his earlier stories were set.

That children’s story was The Hobbit. It became so popular that Tolkien’s publisher requested he write a sequel. 

Tolkien got to work. However, what he turned in was not The Hobbit sequel that was requested, but The Lord of the Rings. Many of us readers consider The LOTR to be a sequel to The Hobbit, but Tolkien considered it to be a continuation of his stories about the First Age.

His son, Christopher, later released these stories as The Silmarillion. (My edition of LOTR has some of this history included as back matter. Do all editions?)

Christopher has edited and released many of Tolkien’s works in recent years. The latest book, The Fall of Gondolin, was published in 2018.

All this to say, that when I read The LOTR, I was reading a story that had thousands and thousands of years of history to it. Some of the characters refer to past places and events and kingdoms that were still affecting the current narrative.

In addition, The LOTR, The Silmarillion, and The Fall of Gondolin seems like reading history because of the language. The vocabulary is expansive and challenging. The syntax often has a formal and old-fashioned feel.

It’s like I’m reading something written hundreds of years ago.

That’s totally different than reading some historical fiction written in the Twenty-first Century.

I don’t want to be too critical of modern historical fiction. Authors are told to avoid dialects, slang, obscure language in order to be accessible to the modern reader—especially child readers.

I understand and agree with that.

I find Shakespeare to be difficult to read, and his works are only about 500 years old. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, just over 600 years old, are totally inaccessible to me unless they have been translated into modern, or somewhat modern, English.

Yet a story written in Twenty-First Century English with only a sprinkling of historical vocabulary might sound so modern that it doesn’t feel historical at all.

I prefer historical stories to land in the middle of the language continuum—neither so obscure that I can’t understand it, nor so modern that it sounds like the dialogue is spoken by contemporary speakers. (There are many modern historical fiction that are good examples of this. Last month I wrote about Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm that feels like it’s truly set in the 1930s because of the vocabulary the characters used.)

I find that Tolkien’s writing, although challenging, is also delightful and gives an added sense of history to his stories. The stories feel real.

What makes a story feel historical to you? The vocabulary? Setting? Something else? Are you a Tolkien fan? Have you read The Fall of Gondolin? What did you think?

Summer Stories Set in the Past Delight Me in the Now

This summer I read two wonderful books that are both considered British children’s classics. I missed them as a kid, so this was my first time to experience the wonder and delight of reading them.

The two books were The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, published in 1905, and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, published in 1930.

Both of these would be lumped into the historical fiction genre for today’s readers.

However, I’d place them into a sub-genre I refer to as Past Contemporary. By this I mean that although both of these stories are set in our (as readers) past, the authors set them in their own contemporary time periods.

Now they are historical stories, but when published they were contemporary stories.

For a discussion of the three sub-genres of historical fiction, see my previous article, Historical Fiction: My Definition.

It seems like I’m splitting hairs, but it is helpful for readers to know they might need to do a little legwork to understand all the cultural references the authors assumed their readers would get.

It’s also nice to know that the way the time period and culture is portrayed is through the characters’ and authors’ eyes, and not interpreted by later authors imposing their own thoughts and feelings onto the past.

Past contemporary stories give a truer glimpse into how people thought in the past.

Granted, both of the books I read seem to give an idealized account of childhood. I would accept that about Swallows and Amazons. The children have lovely adventure without being in any danger. True evil never touches them. The story is an ode to play and imagination and adults getting out of the way.

In The Railway Children, however, the children are dealing with the dire consequences from someone’s wrongdoing. Their mother hides the worst from them and helps them see their situation as an adventure.

I love how both books show loving families and healthy relationships. Their “innocent” lives are a huge part of why I enjoyed the books. Dark stories are generally not my cup of tea.

I also enjoyed the glimpse into rural England in early Twentieth Century. These stories truly did bring me to another time and place.

Whats your favorite children’s Past Contemporary book? What do you like about it?

Learning History and Writing From Scott O’Dell Award-winning Historical Fiction for Kids

I consider myself a fan of historical fiction for children, so a few years ago I checked a list of the winners of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. To my surprise, of the thirty-some winners, I had only read four!

I then challenged myself to read all the winners and to report in my blog-at-the-time what I learned about history and about writing. I only have about five books left.

To make it easy for you, I’ve gathered all my articles to a separate page on this website, and I’ll keep adding to the page as I complete the rest of the books.

The Scott O’Dell award is given each year to an American author for a children’s historical fiction book. If O’Dell’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he wrote The Island of the Blue Dolphins and then a host of other historical novels for kids.

Which Scott O’Dell Award-winning books have you read?

Historical Fiction: My Definition

Welcome to my new blog! Some of you know that I blogged for several years at www.debwatley.com. But as I’ve started my own company and next week will release my own book, Summer Ruins, I am making a fresh start with a new website/blog.

I will continue to blog about many of the same things: history, archeology, memory, and stories, especially stories for kids. I’ll expand that by also writing about imagination and play.

I’ll write a lot about historical fiction. I love to read it. And although Summer Ruins is contemporary fiction, I also love to write historical fiction.

What exactly is historical fiction?

Can we classify The Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Little House series, and Pride and Prejudice as examples of historical fiction? After all, these stories are set in the past.

Yes, I would classify all three of those examples as historical fiction, especially for child readers, because to an eight-year-old, anything beyond five years ago is ancient history.

My definition of historical fiction: A genre comprised of all stories set in the past.

Splitting up fiction into genres is a function of marketing. It helps match the books to the readers’ interests. It gives the readers some idea of what to expect in a novel.

However, I’d like to split this huge genre into three sub-genres: past contemporary, personal historical fiction, and researched historical fiction.

Past Contemporary: Any story that an author wrote that is set in his or her time period. Often in past contemporary novels, authors assume readers are familiar with current events and culture, so they don’t explain things their contemporary readers already know and understand.

For example, Pride and Prejudice and other books by Jane Austen are set in her own time period. Even while she purposefully wrote stories that focused on family and community instead of the large geo-political events of her time, she often placed soldiers or sailers in her stories without explaining their presence. Yet her first readers would’ve understood and expected a military presence because many of her books were set during the same time period as the Napoleonic Wars.

But in 2018 adult readers, who have some knowledge of British history, may or may not get those kinds of details. Child readers may struggle even more to understand cultural references and values, as well as unfamiliar vocabulary and dialogue.

However, many past contemporary books have successfully passed the test of time, and readers still identify with the characters, their problems, and their universal emotions.

These are great books to read in order to immerse oneself into a past time period. Readers can really get a feeling and understanding of what the time period was like, especially of what people then took for believed—or feared–was coming in their own future.

Personal Historical Fiction: Stories in which the author not only lived in that time period but relied on personal experience to write the story. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books are an example. Although she wrote the stories about 40-50 years after the time period of the stories, Wilder relied heavily on her own experiences. As the author, she knew her child readers wouldn’t understand a lot of the details, so she described how things were done. But she didn’t have to go to the library to read about others’ pioneer experiences. She could draw from her own memory.

These types of books are also great for understanding the zietgeist of the stories’ time periods. However, readers might come away with the added benefit of learning about the time period of the writing of the book as the authors translate their history for us. Authors might not do this consciously, but even by picking what details to show or not show, they reveal what they thought was important at the time of writing.

Researched Historical Fiction: Any story that takes place far enough back that the author has little or no memories of the time period. For instance, Scott O’Dell’s novel, The Island of the Blue Dolphins, is set more than a century before he wrote the book. He had to use research and imagination to compose this story.

Another example would be if I wrote a story about the Vietnam Conflict era. I was alive during the end of it. But I have no personal memories of it. If I wrote a book, I would have to research it just as much as if I wrote a book about the Civil War.

Books in this sub-genre often have more descriptions and explanations of vocabulary, setting, and events. Authors of these books may use details to give the stories the flavor of the past, but they may also focus on keeping the readability level appropriate for modern readers.

Again, the authors are translating the zeitgeist of the historical time periods, as well as their own, for current readers.

For more information about the genre of historical fiction, check out this article: Defining the Genre: What are the rules for historical fiction? It was helpful to me, especially author Sarah Johnson’s take on what I’m calling researched historical fiction.

I’d love to use your feedback to refine my thoughts. How do you define historical fiction?