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<i>Historical Fiction for Children: Capturing the Past</i> (review)

2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chq.0.1497

1553-1201

Margaret Mackey,

Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy

Reviewed by: Historical Fiction for Children: Capturing the Past Margaret Mackey (bio) Historical Fiction for Children: Capturing the Past. Edited by Fiona M. Collins and Judith Graham. London: Fulton, 2001 Historical fiction is a genre that suffers from many misapprehensions. The dominant stereotype is that teachers love it because it is so informative, and children resist it because it is both unfamiliar and improving—and often tends to come in very thick books. Of course, these generalizations are unfair to all parties: teachers, children, and historical novels. This new book of essays, edited by Fiona Collins and Judith Graham of the University of Surrey Roehampton in the United Kingdom, does a good job of demonstrating how subtle, varied, challenging, and fascinating historical fiction can be. One other important adjective for historical fiction is "national," and the book's British origins shine through in many different ways. The editors and authors make a number of successful efforts to include international examples (including two very good chapters on aspects of the North American experience), but the overall ethos and understanding of history that [End Page 105] illuminates this book is profoundly British. It reflects a society that takes for granted a lengthy and relatively consistent past, in which the careful maintenance of written records has been valued for centuries. It also, with the exception of the two North American chapters, largely focuses on historical fiction that considers the idea of a known landscape being seen differently, rather than exploring completely new territory. This deep background, however, does not mean that this book presents a tranquil or uncontested understanding of history. History is always partial, and historical fiction written for children must find ways of coming to terms with this partiality. The book presents a variety of lively examples of this dynamic at work. The book is divided into three sections: Exploring the Narrative Past, Writing about the Narrative Past, and Teaching the Narrative Past. As these headings indicate, the contributors include children's authors, teachers and teacher educators, and a number of scholars in the field of children's literature. Interestingly, only one contributor (Dave Martin) lists his main scholarly interest as history. The result of this mix of interests and specializations can be described as a kind of "applied scholarship," a category that generally appeals to me, as I like to see academic insight put to work in the world. Naturally, as in any collection of essays, some are stronger than others. However, as a reader who has encountered a great deal of information and opinion about historical children's fiction over the years, I approached each chapter with internal questions: What should make me interested in this chapter? What does it have to say that's new and interesting? In nearly every case, there was some kind of positive answer, and the effect of the book overall exceeded the sum of its parts in a very productive way. Exploring the Narrative Past This section contains eight essays. The first two, appropriately enough, are historical overviews. Dennis Butts writes about nineteenth-century historical novels for children, and Fiona M. Collins and Judith Graham write about how the field changed in the twentieth century. Butts produces a fairly conventional account of Martineau, Marryat, Yonge, Ballantyne, Henty, Stevenson, et al., but enlivens his assessment by making use of Leon Garfield's division of historical novels into the doglike and the catlike: doglike books subordinate the characters to the history, and catlike novels stress character over history. Collins and Graham subtitle their twentieth-century chapter "Giving Everybody a History," and their analysis pays due tribute to Geoffrey Trease, whose long and pioneering writing life was devoted to finding ways to introduce child readers to the ordinary people of history. Collins and Graham are rather more international in their account, but of course the limits of chapter size mean that they can only capture the highlights of a broad and varied canvas. Johnny Tremain and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry are featured alongside the works of Rosemary Sutcliff and Cynthia Harnett. Many authors are mentioned in passing, but the chief virtue of the chapter is its useful focus on general questions about the changing...