From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 16:32:47 -0400

Some time back in this discussion, Jonathan said:
        Does what students learn from a historical novel really transfer over and inform their understanding of history? And vice versa? I've never seen a student cite a core literature novel on a history essay question, nor reference historical data from an informational book on a literature essay question. Does it happen? I don't know.


I've been mulling about this, and I wonder if the impact of reading historical fiction is something that comes to you later in life, long after the actual reading. Some books resonate down through the years, don't they, if they were powerful enough to lodge in our brains and our hearts.

I had a high school history teacher who knew that our English curriculum in that school was slanted heavily toward Shakespeare, Dickens, and the romantic poets, so he distributed a suggested summer reading list for college-bound juniors to help us get into the 20th century. Thanks to him, I read The Grapes of Wrath at a very impressionable age. I remember it had a huge impact then, but I doubt that I could have put that impact into words at the time, or that I would have cited that book in a history essay because the impact was hugely personal. I often think back on that book - and the stage and screen versions I've seen - and truly believe that it shaped my political and social conscience - along with Howard Fast's Freedom Road which I read a few years later. I've been at political odds with the rest of my family ever since ;-}

And The Grapes of Wrath raises another thought about "historical" fiction - after all, the Depression and the Dust Bowl were hardly history when Steinbeck was writing about them. Is there a difference between historical fiction written as such and historical fiction written by a contemporary of the time? This would apply to Huckleberry Finn, Little Women, and many books we now consider "historical."

And then there is historical fiction based on an author's memory of historical events of his/her own childhood, like Pat Giff's Lily's Crossing and so many other wonderful ones.

And my newest favorite, just finished last night - David Almond's The Fire?ters. For anyone who was conscious at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Almond seems to be able to reach inside you and touch those buried fears, to bring back the raw terror of a world on the brink of the unspeakable. With his staccato sentences and spare prose, he seems to burn images into your mind, at least into this mind. There are so many ways he explores the issues of war and terror, of pain and suffering, of life and death in this book. Has anyone had a chance to introduce it to kids yet?

Connie Rockman
Received on Fri 14 May 2004 03:32:47 PM CDT