Historical Fact in YA Fiction

When I was in high school, I took the AP US History exam. After the test, a couple of friends mentioned one of the multiple choice questions that neither of them could answer. “Oh, it was C,” I said. When they asked me how I knew that, even though it wasn’t covered in class, I said, “It was in one of the Felicity books.”

I really enjoyed history in school, but most of the historical knowledge I retain probably has to do with novels I read. (The American Girl books cover most American History for me.) As Whitney Etchison says in this post at The Hub, history isn’t about dates and facts–it’s about the story of people’s lives. And what better way to engage in those stories than through great fiction?

She also offers some great options for historical YA fiction, including Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. A few others I’d suggest:

Maybe fiction can’t take the place of high school history classes, but novels like these can certainly engage readers and get them emotionally invested in historical events.

Any other historical fiction favorites to add to the list?

Katherine Paterson in Lowell for Talk About Historical Fiction

Grrr, I’m booked that night, but this presentation by Katherine Paterson sounds fantastic:

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 3, 2012
Where:
UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, 50 Warren St., Lowell, MA

Paterson, the Library of Congress’s 2010-2012 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will talk about how historical research, a compelling plot, and a feisty female character combine to create a novel that breathes life into the story of Lowell’s 19th-century textile mills and the labor activism of “mill girls.”

Click through for more info. Apparently you need to reserve a space in advance. I had the opportunity to see Katherine Paterson at another NCBLA event, and she was fantastic. I’d love to hear her thoughts on creating compelling historical fiction.

(via The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance)

Books for Our Boys: Armed Service Editions

My friend Caitlin wrote a fantastic article about a little-known aspect of WWII history: Armed Services Editions. Pocket-sized versions of popular novels like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were given to soldiers to boost morale.

The history of how the books came to be published is fascinating. One part in particular I liked:

The concept of issuing pocket-sized books to the military didn’t come to the government immediately, nor was the idea of sending books to those overseas new. Book drives for the military had occurred regularly at libraries across the country during World War I. But after the outbreak of World War II, Americans began raiding their personal libraries for books to send to troops overseas with a vigor that far outstripped their previous efforts—motivated this time by nearly a decade of exposure to news stories about Nazi book bans and photographs of towering infernos built to consume “un-German” tomes. The first Nazi book burnings, organized across 34 college towns by the German Students Association on May 10, 1933, reduced some 25,000 books to ash; by 1938, the Nazi government had outright banned 18 categories of books—4,175 titles in all—and the works of 565 authors, many of them Jewish. Now that the United States was officially at war, what better way to strike back at the enemy than by allowing soldiers to read exactly what they wished? Books were no longer simple diversions for fighting men—they had become totems signifying what those men were fighting for.”

I love this idea. Books aren’t just a form of entertainment–they signify intellectual freedom and an appreciation for humanity as a whole.

Make sure to read the whole article; it’s really moving.

Searching for Amelia Earhart

Last night my friend Rachel sent me a link to a news article about the revived search for Amelia Earhart. The privately funded search will be begin in the Pacific in July, marking the 75th anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance. A picture from 1937 of Gardner Island suggests that may have been where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crashed and possibly lived for a short period. Still, finding wreckage or other evidence isn’t an easy task. From an NPR article about the expedition:

“Renowned oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreckage of the Titanic and the Bismarck and is advising the Earhart expedition, said the new analysis of the photograph could be the equivalent of a “smoking gun” as it narrows the search area from tens of thousands of square miles to a manageable size.

Ballard confessed to having been previously intimidated by the challenge of finding clues to Earhart’s whereabouts.

“If you ever want a case of finding a needle in a haystack, this is at the top of the list,” he said.”

Even though my novel’s not historical fiction, Amelia plays a significant part in Queen of the Air and I’m glad to see that she’s still such a iconic figure in American history.

Roger Ebert seems to be a fan as well. Over the summer he shared this post on the anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance, complete with cool videos. (He retweeted it again today.)

Seeing this gets me pumped to revise, revise, revise!

(image: Chicago Sun-Times)

The Crossover Question

With books like The Hunger Games dominating the bestseller lists and The Fault in Our Stars being reviewed by Slate and the New York Times, there’s no question about how popular children’s and young adult literature has become for readers of all ages.

At the Globe and Mail, Jeet Heer has an interesting post about why these reading groups seem to be merging. He looks at Victorian literature, which bridged that age gap as well, and finds a focus on reading as a family activity:

“What accounts for the curious populist reading culture of the Victorians, which assumed that kids could read Moby-Dick and adults could enjoy Little Women? Partly, there was the enduring power of the family. This was an era when many people read together under the roof of domesticity, complete with recitals and theatrical performances based on books. Given that families shared novels, books were assumed to have a multigenerational audience.

But beyond the role of family life, which we see echoed in President Obama reading with his daughters, there was the unstated but widely held idea that reading is a democratic act, open to anyone who applies effort. Every child aspires to learn more, so she can push herself through difficult texts. Conversely, every adult was once a child and can, through reading, recapture some of the wonder and purity of earlier life.”

I find this as a very interesting connection, and one I very much hope to be true. I liked being able to share books with my parents when I was young. Once, on vacation, my mom and I swapped our beach books–she read The Outsiders and I read Sophie’s World. It was great to be able to have conversations about both books that we ended up really enjoying.

I would add that this crossover of adult and children’s lit also comes from there being a greater acceptance of content in children’s books. It’s not all just Sweet Valley High or The Hardy Boys anymore. Children’s and YA writers are allowed to take greater writerly risks now. (Just pick up The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing if you want proof of what YA writing can be. Stunning.) Boundaries are being pushed, and adult readers are increasingly realizing that there are some arresting, engaging stories over at the YA section.

Also, I think YA and children’s writers manage to balance pushing boundaries with telling a compelling story. Young readers don’t necessarily want to see literary gimmicks. They want a compelling story with compelling characters. As a result, writers can play with genre but still need to have a grounding in the literary basics, which all readers can appreciate.

A History in Pictures

Writing and illustrating picture books is hard. To execute it well, you have to have the succinctness of a poet, an understanding about how children see and want to see the world, and an artistic vision. How do you guys do it?

To help me wrap my brain around it, the Atlantic has a very cool article about the history of picture books all over the world. The article is almost a review of Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling, by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles, which sounds fascinating. I especially liked this quote by Maurice Sendak about Randolph Caldecott, who basically invented the picture book as we know it:

“Caldecott’s work heralds the beginning of the modern picture book. He devised an ingenious juxtaposition of picture and word, a counter pint that never happened before. Words are left out — but the picture says it. Pictures are left out — but the words say it. In short, it is the invention of the picture book.”

Make sure to check out the whole article. Lots of great images as well!