Writing History
Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 03:00PM | Lynn Historical fiction combines the novel form with the history of a place and/or details of a specific decade. Books created from this form of writing are especially helpful to elementary school teachers. Even though the characters and their dialogue are fiction, the settings and other images require extensive research.
All the books I have written encompass history. As a children's theater director for nine years, I found that young students embraced history when they enacted historical plays. In fact, when they were allowed to write plays based on an event that interested them, even students as young as fourth grade embraced the experience. (See reproducible plays in the North Carolina Imagination Box.)
When I speak to elementary school students about the Jack Tales and tell them about the historical messages in each story, they have a lot of questions. It is true that most fourth and fifth graders think the 1990s were the "good old days." Yet, they embrace images from the years before they were born.
I've found that the best definition of "history" is the word "story." That's because students who read about events of the past can interpret them in hundreds of different ways. In fact, given a prompt, they can write their own story. Somehow, their imaginations keep student stories from being locked in time. This happens when multiple authors write about the same event or person. It is doubtful that any author sets out to rewrite history; however, when various points of view are used, the same story will come out differently each time. It can be assumed that the interpretation of history is changed (somewhat) by writers who live in the present.
It is far easier for me to write non-fiction or historical fiction for adults, even young adults, than for elementary school students. For instance, I wrote about 74,000 words in Firefight on Vietnam Brown Water, yet Young Ray Hicks Learns the Jack Tales is 32,000 words. The chapter book I'm presently writing for third-graders will only be 9,500 words. In my world, it is far easier to write more rather than less words. Each of these books requires about the same amount of research in order to put together a story. It is difficult to revise, revise, revise and still come up with a complete story, especially one that children will want to read.
As a former child whose parents had lots of stories to tell about my grandparents and about their childhoods, I appreciate the curiosity elementary and middle school students have about times gone by. Most children can't believe that people ever lived without electricity, indoor plumbing, televisions, and computers. As years go by, there will be fewer people who can personally interpret these stories. So it is important to keep writing and talking so enough details will be left to keep stories of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s going.
I present many historical talks for library, senior citizen, historical society, and educational groups. There are still many in these audiences who remember what it was like to can food, grow large gardens, walk a lot of places, heat their homes without central heating, and live without air conditioning. I've begun writing down oral histories from people who are only in their 50s and 60s, because the Vietnam War, interstate highways, television, computers, cell phones, modern travel, multiple cars in every home, and the internet have changed how books are written and read, as well as whether they are read in traditional form or on-line.
Non-fiction and historical fiction for children written in the picture book form of only 32 pages and as few as 1,000 words is a distillation of the subject covered. It is an often over-looked art form mostly by adults...not by children.
Reader Comments (2)
—replica tods handbags RITA PAD is the largest manufacturer of pad printing machines in India and has a formidable 50% market share. We offer pad printing, printing machine, laser marking machine, digital printing machine etc.
—celine replica
Good days give you joy while bad days give you experience. So never regret every single day of your life! sneaker shoes for women