Uncover the Past: Learning History through Children's Literature

This past June, I had the opportunity to attend the American Library Association’s annual conference. I heard a lot of different library professionals and authors speak, but one session stood among the rest. On the last full day of the conference, I joined a room full of children’s librarians for the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) annual awards breakfast. As the award for the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal was being presented to March: Book Three , author Congressman John Lewis stepped up to the microphone and received a standing ovation. Tears came to my eyes as I thought of all his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement of the mid- 20 th Century, and his continued fight for human dignity and equality today. These past few months, a spotlight has swung again on hate and bigotry in our country. While we applaud the triumphs of stories like March , we are reminded just how much we still have to overcome. I left the breakfast inspired. Ear...

This article was written for the Nerdy Book Club. The original post can be read here . When teachers and librarians encourage students to read historical, they not only provide a way to understand the past, they also promote an enjoyment in learning. Historical fiction has not always been used in this way, however. For centuries, children’s literature, and historical fiction in general, failed to accurately reflect and include global humanity. In the nineteenth century, school textbooks would regularly feature stories to illustrate the individual triumphs of those with good character and civic virtue. These stories taught local history, government, and national identity, but they were often ethnocentric and male-dominated narratives. Things began to change in the twentieth century when the Industrial Revolution and mass immigration from Europe influenced writers to embrace realism. Instead of focusing on the privileged and powerful, they captured the lives of comm...

"Values and ideologies, human actions and reactions are not trans-historical; they are contingent on the historical context of the era and are radically different from the present." - Kim Wilson, Re-Visioning Historical Fiction for Young Readers (1) “Historical novels are always products of a particular historical context. As a result, their characters and historical arguments reflect the knowledge, politics, and worldview of authors at a particular moment in time.” - Sara Schwebel, Child-Sized History (2) Below is a selection of classic children’s historical fiction published between the years of 1951 and 1985. While the “history” displayed in these novels has not changed, the context has. What Wilson and Schwebel say is true: historical fiction is a product of one’s own time. An historical story written in the 1950s will be different from one written in the 2000s. Many factors can contribute to this. As time passes, roles, attitudes, and expectation...

Great historical fiction is time travel, we feel we are in another place, seeing more than the record of the past allowed us to know. - Marc Aronson (1) Blending stories into a study of history turns the past into a dynamic place. – Tarry Lindquist (2) Think back to when you were 10 or 11 years old. Can you remember browsing the library shelves for your next favorite chapter book? In school and public libraries across the county, so many of the middle grade chapter books sitting on the shelves have some sort of historical connection. Some are defined by their historical characters and events, while others rely on just a pinch of historical surroundings. Some are considered good historical fiction (even great literature!), while some are judged as fictionalized history. As librarians and educators seeking ways to promote and teach with historical, we must learn how to differentiate between good and “just ok” historical fiction. It is not enough to say that you ...