Why Should Children Read Historical Fiction

Back in the day, as a classroom teacher and as a professor preparing future teachers, I recognized the value of using historical fiction in the classroom. For too many, teaching and learning history comprises a basket of facts. Dates, names, places, battles, treaties, and so on dominate textbooks for students. That’s what the tests, test.

I get it. There’s a lot of history. Going into depth on each topic would mean the school year would long end before the teacher could arrive at present day events. Survey. Overview. Bird’s eye view of history. That’s all we can really expect.

Or is it?

When I was in my own teacher prep program, I conceptualized this brand-new notion. I would teach social studies, science, and language arts as one big interconnected block. Students would be able to contextualize the basket of facts by understanding what was happening in the world at the time. Yeah, I invented that idea. NOT!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that other people thought cross-curricular studies a good idea, too! And it is. Ah, hubris. Thy name is Caroline!

My scaled down version, when faced with classroom realities, pulled relevant historical fiction into the classroom to support the scheduled social studies topics. Sometimes children read the book, sometimes they were read to. Across Five Aprils (Hunt) and The Red Badge of Courage (Crane) put a face on the horrors of our only Civil War. Through the stories of the books’ young people, students explored the war and understood better the issues leading to the conflict.

While not historical fiction, when students read (or listen to) biographies of famous scientists or historical personages they might better grasp the importance of a discovery or insight or decision. Humanizing history is our best bet for creating students who avidly seek to learn about history. Textbooks have never created that love.

When children read historical fiction, they gain insights through re-living the past vicariously. With the perspective of time, the teacher can lead discussions about the mistakes and successes of the past. Historical fiction also shines a light on our shared and ethnic heritages allowing us to realize we are more alike than different.

Universal truths emerge from history, and a well-written historical fiction shines a light of those truths by ensuring they’re highlighted. All of humanity seeks ways to handle problems and confront issues. Historical fiction allows those to emerge. When we understand and/or empathize with alternate perspectives as shown in the novels, we are moving toward a higher plane of self-awareness and application to new situations. We are all interconnected and interrelated, historical fiction shows.

Historical fiction illustrates that change is inevitable and that no nation lasts forever, but what humans want and need remains constant. No matter the culture or the era, humans seek respect, freedom, and belonging.

I believe that there should be a strong strand of great literature in the classroom, because that is part of our historical heritage as well, but bringing in historical fiction and biographies should be happening each week as well.

I’ve always loved history. My fervent wish for all children is that they, too, develop an interest in our past and explore it with passion.

Please share this with others. Thanks!

Facebook: What is the value of historical fiction in schools? Is it worth taking the time to read books that aren’t “on the test?” What do children gain by reading historical fiction? http://bit.ly/2nbJKRk

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The Macy's Day Parade and All That

Happy Thanksgiving! My favorite holiday is less commercialized than many others. To me, Thanksgiving is an F-ing holiday (in a good sense): family, friends, food, fun, and pausing to realize how fortunate we are.

As a child, we always watched the The Macy’s Day Parade. I don’t know who in the family misnamed it, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that someone corrected me. Honestly, it was just a phrase I said, never thinking about the meaning. Of course, it’s the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Duh! The kickoff to the day of eating mindlessly. Gluttony is acceptable this one day of the year, but that was not always the case.

Much has been written about the real first Thanksgiving and how it must have differed from today’s gourmand gluttony. So I won’t go comparing menus and explaining how they couldn’t have had this food or that. Or how Indians and Pilgrims weren’t the besties portrayed in paintings. Others have run with those for years.

Instead, briefly, here are some Thanksgiving jokes to share at the dinner table or over pie later!  Answers to riddles below. Thanks, Internet resources, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Riddles:

1)   What kind of music did the Pilgrims like?

2)   What is a pumpkin’s favorite sport?

3)   What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?

4)   What do Thanksgiving and Halloween have in common?

5)   What key has legs and can’t open doors?

Jokes:

A lady was looking for a turkey but couldn't find one big enough. She asked the stock boy "Do these turkeys get any bigger?" The stock boy replied "No they're dead."

A potato and a sweet potato were playing on the playground. The sweet potato told the potato, "Hey, I just found out I'm related to you." The potato said," No you're are not!" The sweet potato replied, "Yes, I yam."

My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes, but I told them I couldn't quit "cold turkey".

Hope your Turkey is moist and your stuffing in fluffy and when you're done eating you'll be nice and stuffy.

Happy Turkey Day, America! Don't forget to name the turkey and make everyone uncomfortable.

If I was a turkey, I'd be doing everything I could to taste terrible right now.

On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment ..... halftime.

They should change the name of Thanksgiving to something more fitting like say, Turkeypocolypse or Stuffing-cide.

Want to really freak someone out? Add 2 extra turkey legs to the turkey when it's in the oven.

Riddle Answers:

1)   Rock

2)   Squash

3)   Pumpkin pi

4)   One has gobblers and the other goblins

5)   Turkey

Fun? Please share with others. I'm thanks giving to you!

Facebook: Check out @Good2Tweat for some Thanksgiving fun today in between basting the turkey and cooking the cranberries. http://bit.ly/2ATrOOk

Twitter: Take a few moments for some Thanksgiving jokes and laughter. If the turkey is still frozen, you might need it! http://bit.ly/2ATrOOk

Victoria and Abdul

One of my other writing names is deep into National Novel Writing Month and she/I is also deep into revisions/edits on the manuscript to be published by her new editor at Red Adept Publishing.

To say we (and I mean all the pen names) are overbooked when it comes to hours in the day is an understatement.

Still, the show must go on, and so here I, Caroline Adams, am to put up a small blog post today about a movie in theaters recently.

On this blog, I’ve railed against historical movies that take too many liberties with the truth while leading on the viewing audience who may come away thinking the story they saw was the story that happened. Americans knowledge of history is already shaky. Movie, as I’ve stated before, are making it worse. Victoria and Abdul did not leave me with that feeling.

Right up front on an early screen in the movie, they say something like “a true story-mostly”. See, that’s all it takes. Just acknowledge the movie veers from facts on occasion. Let the audience know that the film was Hollywoodized—because we all do know it—and that you are admitting it. Even I, Ms.-Grumpy-Pants-about-Historical-Movies, was satisfied.

And how could you not love the excellent acting of Judi Dench and Ali Fazal?

Now the onus is on the viewer to go fact checking (which I did) to find out where the veers led and how deep they were. They warned you that you’re not watching a documentary.

What surprised me during fact checking was how close to the known facts (because much was destroyed by the vindictive King Edward after his mother’s death) the movie was. I give the movie kudos, as well, for displaying the overt and covert racism endemic in the English court and society at the time. They did a wonderful job of revealing the callousness and ignorance of such a stance.

Oh, there were many facts glossed over in the movie, like the land Victoria gave Abdul that he expanded so he didn’t die in poverty as the movie suggested. Still, on the whole, the movie replicated much we do know from surviving pictures and documents.

Good for Hollywood! Now, how about that little disclaimer on every historical movie. Keep these good movies as historical movies, not historical fiction.

Facebook: It takes little on the part of #historical movie producers to let the audience know not to view a movie as a history lesson. Victoria and Abdul is a fine example of what to do. http://bit.ly/2zO129X

Twitter: Hollywoodization of #historical movies is standard fare. But one little addition to the film keeps viewers from thinking everything they see is true. #VictoriaandAbdul http://bit.ly/2zO129X

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I have been asked that question countless times for my fiction in culinary mysteries, romance, science fiction, paranormal, and women’s fiction. “Where do you get your ideas?” I am always puzzled by the question because I am constantly bombarded with story concepts and premises. Isn’t everyone? Apparently not.

I think one reason I am a good crit partner is that I can see alternative paths, twists and turns, and plot points laid out. Story ideas bubble over and when someone extends one of my ideas, I get three more. That’s just how my brain works.

But the question is a whole different one with historical fiction and biography.

What really happened, who really lived are the triggers. Authors don’t need to create them. They only need to explore them from a unique perspective.

I find myself attracted to eras or odd discoveries or ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Topics for historical fiction and biography are even more prevalent in my brain than fiction tales.

In large part I credit this prevalence to my curiosity and wide-ranging interests. When I was touring the New York City Transit Museum and happened on Elizabeth Jennings Graham and her role in the pre-Civil War desegregation of the New York City transit system, the idea to do an Intrepid Women biography series for middle graders was born. Once I had that idea, intrepid women were everywhere. I stumbled across so many, I won’t be able to tell all their stories.

My nascent historical fiction of a Singua woman in northern Arizona about 1400 C.E. is born from a flashback/deja vu I had while visiting Walnut Canyon the first time. She didn’t live (did she?), but someone very like her did. And don’t you find the latest discoveries establishing the accuracy of pre-Clovis peoples just too exciting? Let’s tell their stories, whoever they were, who left little evidence.

We watch movies and TV shows based on the forgotten women in NASA, the relationship of an aging queen with an Indian companion, attempts to kill Hitler, the Kennedy assassination and more.

Someone was intrigued by a kernel of truth and wanted to explore it. Historical fiction and biography, to a lesser degree, are a meld of fact and fiction. How much of each varies from author to author. But the story ideas? They’re true and they are everywhere.

If you found this interesting, please share on social media.

Facebook: Caroline Adams asks “Where do story ideas come from?” and she thinks she has some insights. http://bit.ly/2zItkFA

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Lynne Kennedy--Imagining Alternative History

I am so happy to have one of my favorite historical fiction writers on the blog today. Lynne Kennedy is an amazing researcher who turns history into imaginative fiction. Pick up some of her books and join me in admiring her work. Welcome, Lynne!

Writing historical mysteries is a juggling act.  Writers must create a fictional plot with fictional characters around a historical time period with real people. . . and somehow suspend the readers’ disbelief.

Many writers of historical fiction choose a particular time period and stay with it.  I’m thinking Anne Perry, Phillipa Gregory, Charles Todd.  I, on the other hand, am intrigued by so many time periods, I skip around.  Each of my mysteries takes place in a different place and time, which enables me to do the thing I love most: research.   The risk, of course, is that I will know only a little about each time period as opposed to Anne Perry who knows a great deal about Victorian England.

Once I settle on a time period, I read and read and read about it.  I visit the places in question, interview experts, historians, and read and read and read some more.  By this time, I usually have a kernel of an idea for the plot and maybe even a character sketch or two. 

Building fictional characters around authentic ones is key.  Unless your character is transported from modern times to the past, he/she must act, speak, dress like the time period.  In using real people from the time period, they must be as genuine to history as I can make them.

As the story develops and takes twists and turns on its own, I find I am bending the truth a bit–creating an “alternate history.”  This is fiction, after all.  The book I am working on now, Time Lapse, will be a totally new take on the Jack the Ripper murders.  Some will think it’s an outlandish scenario, completely out of the realm of possibility, but since there have been hundreds of theories and books written on this serial killer, why not one more? The backdrop and many characters are authentic, but the storyline meanders considerably from what we know to be historically accurate.  Still, Jack has never been caught.  What if my resolution is. . .  never mind.

In fact, the questions I ask take the form of “what if” and I let my imagination run free.  It’s a rare writer that can devise a plotline that hasn’t already been done.  But even a clichéd plot can be made new and fresh with unusual twists, powerful characters and exceptional prose. 

As I put the final touches on this fifth novel, I realize I am bending history to fit the story.  That’s the advantage of fiction.  And its strength. 

With a Masters’ Degree in Science and more than 28 years as a science museum director, Lynne Kennedy has had the opportunity to study history and forensic science, both of which play significant roles in her novels. She has written five historical mysteries, each solved by modern technology.

Time Exposure: Civil War photography meets digital photography to solve a series of murders in two centuries.

The Triangle Murders was the winner of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Mystery Category, 2011, and was awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree Award for independent books of high standards.

Deadly Provenance has also been awarded a B.R.A.G. Medallion and was a finalist for the San Diego Book Awards. With the release of Deadly Provenance, Lynne has launched a "hunt for a missing Van Gogh," the painting which features prominently in the book. "Still Life: Vase with Oleanders" has, in actuality, been missing since WWII.

Her fourth book, Pure Lies, won the 2014 “Best Published Mystery” award by the San Diego Book Awards, and was a finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award.

Time Lapse, her fifth and latest mystery, premiered at the end of 2016 to all 5-star reviews.

She blogs regularly and has many loyal readers and fans.  Visit her website at www.lynnekennedymysteries.com