Lincoln on the Big Screen

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Detail, Lincoln poster
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Have you seen Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln? With a Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating of over 90% and audience approval of more than 80%, viewers praised the film for its earnestness and significance, and for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as the president.

But what do historians have to say? How do they approach the film, and how do they assess it? Even if your students haven't seen the film, reading historians' reviews can help them understand the ways of thinking and types of knowledge that historians use to assess historical accuracy, bias, intended audience, and more.

What do historians' reviews focus on? Do they talk about the same things as "normal" critics' reviews? Do all historians share similar opinions about the movie? How do historians structure their reviews? Does each review make an argument?

Take a look at these reviews to get started:

  • James Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, says Lincoln does "what a film like this should do: stimulate discussion about history."
  • Kate Masur, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, criticizes the movie as "more to entertain and inspire than to educate."
  • David Thomson, film historian and critic, considers the film "necessary" and its release right after the 2012 presidential election significant.
  • Allen Guelzo, director of the Civil War studies department at Gettysburg College, questions whether highlighting Lincoln's conflict between ending the war quickly and holding out until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment made the movie too complicated.

Students not ready for reading these reviews? Ask them where they think the sound in films comes from. The Washington Post reveals that many of the sounds in Lincoln come from historic buildings and artifacts—including one of Abraham Lincoln's pocketwatches.

For more information

Was Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter more historically accurate than Lincoln? No, but you could still use it to teach! Check out our blog entry on the film.

Also see our blog entry on the film The Conspirator. How does it portray Mary Surratt, the only woman accused in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?

Vitamins in Chocolate Cake: Why Use Historical Fiction in the Classroom?

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Photography, Child Reading with Teddy Bear, 18 December 2010, Jennifer Durfey, F
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One of the great pleasures of my job as a writer for American Girl is getting letters from my young readers. Over the years, I’ve had tens of thousands of letters, every one as unique, sweet, earnest, and quirky as its writer. Very often, my correspondent asks me, “Why do you write about people who lived long ago?” And I write back, “Because I love thinking about what your life or my life would have been like if we had lived in another time, don’t you?” But that answer tells only one reason why I write historical fiction, and why I think it is a good idea to use historical fiction to teach history. There are other reasons, too.

First, I think historical fiction can make history matter—make it irresistible—to young readers. And it is important to make history matter, because reading about the past not only gives children factual information—sort of a mental timeline, for example, so that they know that the Revolutionary War happened before the Civil War—but learning about the past also allows, encourages, and teaches a child to identify with other voices, views, cultures, and times, which is a good life skill. Reading about the past teaches empathy and compassion. It helps a child see the similarities that lie just underneath our differences.

What we’re trying to do through historical fiction is to help our students realize they are what history is.

Ah, but how do we capture the children’s interest? How do we pique their curiosity? How do we engage their imaginations? Well, that’s the magic of historical fiction. And that magic is a second reason why I write historical fiction, and why I think it is good to use it in the classroom. I believe that good historical fiction exercises a child’s imagination through a vicarious experience. It leads children to use themselves and their own lives as comparisons to the characters that lived long ago and often, far away, to reflect on their own experience, to ask their families questions. It awakens awareness, perks up perception, sparks conversations. Reading historical fiction can lead a child to ask, ”What’s my voice? What’s my view? Which side should I be on? Is there a right side?“ So really, what we’re trying to do through historical fiction is to help our students realize they are what history is. What they do matters. They had better pay attention. What we’re trying to do is to sort of tickle a moral intelligence, a mindfulness, a sense of responsibility, into being.

Historical fiction helps us fire up our students and readers because it uses emotion to make the facts matter.

Helping children to be empathetic to others and more aware of themselves are two good and worthy reasons to use historical fiction, but to me, there’s a third reason that’s most important of all. I think the best word to describe it is delight. Teachers and writers want to inspire enthusiasm. We want to say to children, “Oh, look! Isn’t that cool? Can you believe how wacky and wild and fascinating the world is? The universe is abundant and it’s all out there waiting for you.” Historical fiction helps us fire up our students and readers because it uses emotion to make the facts matter. It uses emotion to teach gentle life lessons, and to form a ribbon of connection between the child in the classroom and the characters in the story.

Good historical fiction is funny, challenging, amusing, absorbing, scary, sad, and full of—here’s that word again—delight. Historical fiction is inspired by the child and inspires the child in return. It celebrates the child. It respects the child. Good historical fiction meets readers where they are right now, engaged with school, family, and friends, feeling the drives for love and friendship, and feeling the conflict between being a member of society and yet defining one’s self as a unique and independent being. It grows out of the child’s nature, which is energetic, curious, merry, passionate, exuberant, and earnest. So you might say that my readers themselves are another reason why I write historical fiction. And your students are the reason why historical fiction is a sturdy and effective vehicle for teaching history and a gift—a very good gift—to use in the classroom.

For more information

Say you're already using historical fiction in the classroom—what about asking your students to write some of their own? High school teacher Ron Gorr has some ideas. Just as students should read historical fiction along with primary and secondary sources, so should students write it drawing on primary and secondary sources. Ask students how they think their fiction (and the fiction they read) reflects the writer as well as her or his historical research. What in the story shows modern ways of thinking? What might people living at the time the stories are set in think if they read them?

War of Words: The Last Colonial War in American Literature Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/04/2008 - 14:03
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Professor Wayne Franklin discusses the life and work of James Fenimore Cooper, his inspiration for and work on the French and Indian War novel The Last of the Mohicans, and the influence of his depiction of this war on U.S. popular novels, works on the war, literature and on the colonial-era history of the U.S. Franklin also covers, in relation, the history of fiction-writing and novels in the U.S.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/09/2012 - 17:50
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Photo, Life mask and plaster hands of Abraham Lincoln, Highsmith, LoC
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While your students likely won't see Timur Bekmambetov's film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in theatres (it's rated R), there's a chance they might read the book it's based on.

In his mashup of historical details and fictional supernatural conspiracy, author Seth Grahame-Smith imagines Abraham Lincoln's life as a secret quest to rid the U.S. of vampires. As Lincoln grows up and becomes a lawyer, politician, and, finally, president, he slays monsters that threaten the safety of his friends, family, and country.

What can teachers do with this meshing of history and fiction? First, remind students that historical fiction presents the past as part of a larger story. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, with vampires fighting in the Civil War, may be more obvious than most, but even the most carefully-crafted story, based on primary sources and taking multiple perspectives into account, should be examined as historical fiction.

Remind students to think critically about representations of the past.

Authors must select a viewpoint, develop their plot, and try to make sense of existing secondary and primary sources in a way that engages readers in a tale with a beginning and an end. Students should approach any work of historical fiction with a critical eye.

Second, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter presents an opportunity to talk to students about assessing secondary and primary sources. Grahame-Smith writes his novel in the style of a biography, including verified facts from Lincoln's life and quotations from genuine primary sources alongside horror-story fantasy, invented "excerpts" from the fictional "secret diaries" of Abraham Lincoln, and doctored photographs.

Ask students to think about the tricks Grahame-Smith uses to make his story seem true.

Ask students to think about the tricks Grahame-Smith uses to make his story seem true. When he "quotes" from Lincoln's imaginary vampire-hunting diaries, he formats the imaginary quotes just like his quotes from real primary sources. He includes misspellings to make them appear unedited, and he adds ellipses to make it look like he's taking the "quotes" from longer documents. He adds footnotes to explain details in the fictional sources, as though he were a historian explaining background or additional information.

So, how can students know if a detail or event reported as "true" in a story like this is true? Do your research! Look to primary sources and reputable secondary sources for confirmation.

For instance, did the young Lincoln actually win the loyalty of the "Clary's Grove Boys" by beating their leader in a fight? Is this story mentioned in any biographies or other secondary sources? Do any firsthand witnesses describe it? How about Lincoln himself?

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a flight of fantasy, but its over-the-top combination of history and fiction can help remind students to always think historically. Never take anything you read for granted (with or without vampires)!

For more information

Interested in teaching with fiction? Pick up tips on where to look for titles and how to incorporate historical fiction in the classroom in Ask a Master Teacher.

Six educators and authors share their views on teaching with historical fiction in our Roundtable.

Teach with "history book sets" of historical fiction and primary sources in Teaching Guides.

Check out a lesson plan on Paul Revere's ride—a story embellished in art and literature.

World War and Literature

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Poster, Books wanted for our men in camp..., c.1918-1923, C.B. Falls, LoC
Question

Can you suggest any literature covering World War I to World War II that my 10th-grade world history class can read? I am looking for short stories or novels from that period that would interest my students. I would like stories that include what life was like during these years for young people.

Answer

Historical literature can really grab your students' interest. Consider the following excerpt:

They had come for him just after midnight. Three men in suits and ties and black fedoras with FBI badges under their coats. 'Grab your toothbrush,' they’d said. This was back in December, right after Pearl Harbor, when they were still living in the white house on the wide street in Berkeley not far from the sea. The Christmas tree was up and the whole house smelled of pine, and from his window the boy had watched as they led his father out across the lawn in his bathrobe and slippers to the black car that was parked at the curb.

He had never seen his father leave the house without his hat on before. That was what had troubled him most. No hat. And those slippers: battered and faded, with the rubber soles curling up at the edges. If only they had let him put on his shoes then it all might have turned out differently. But there had been no time for shoes.

Grab your toothbrush.
Come on. Come on. You’re coming with us.
We just need to ask your husband a few questions.
Into the car, Papa-san

Later, the boy remembered seeing lights on in the house next door, and faces pressed to the window. One of them was Elizabeth's, he was sure of it. Elizabeth Morgana Roosevelt had seen his father taken away in his slippers.

The next morning his sister had wandered around the house looking for the last place their father had sat. Was it the red chair? Or the sofa? The edge of his bed? She had pressed her face to the bedspread and sniffed.

"The edge of my bed," their mother had said.

That evening she had lit a bonfire in the yard and burned all of the letters from Kagoshima. She burned the family photographs and the three silk kimonos she had brought over with her nineteen years ago from Japan. She burned the records of Japanese opera. She ripped up the flag of the red rising sun. She smashed the tea set and the Imari dishes and the framed portrait of the boy's uncle, who had once been a general in the Emperor's army. She smashed the abacus and tossed it into the flames. "From now on," she said, "we are counting on our fingers."

The next day, for the first time ever, she sent the boy and his sister to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunch pails. "No more rice balls," she said. "And if anyone asks, you're Chinese."

The boy had nodded. "Chinese," he whispered. "I'm Chinese."

"And I," said the girl, "am the Queen of Spain."

"In your dreams," said the boy.

"In my dreams," said the girl, "I'm the King."

—When the Emperor Was Divine, a novel by Julie Otsuka, p. 73–75

Recommendations

This list includes books considered to be for adult readers as well as books considered to be for young adult readers. These labels are only somewhat useful. Occasionally the young adult books are less challenging, though perhaps equally rewarding, for the reader.

A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot won the Prix Interallie in 1991. This nonlinear mystery is a moving and incisive portrait of life in France during and after the First World War.

An ambitious, meticulously researched, novel, The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages is set in New Mexico in 1943 and told from the viewpoint of two disenfranchised children at Los Alamos where scientists and mathematicians converge (along with their families) to construct and test the first nuclear bomb. Grades 5–up.

No Pretty Pictures, Caldecott illustrator Anita Lobel's haunting memoir of her traumatic years in Nazi-occupied Poland, is told from the perspective of a child—she is just five when the war begins—who does not fully comprehend what she is witnessing. Grade 6–up.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo is a slim, stunning, and easily accessible novel written by the author of War Horse. "Exquisitely written vignettes explore bonds of brotherhood that cannot be broken by the physical and psychological wars of the First World War," said Horn Book Magazine. Grade 7–up. Match with the superb photo-essay The War to End All Wars: World War I by Russell Freedman.

Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney is a graceful, restrained, and detailed portrait of America's Great Depression, a time when the radio delivered the sound of Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington into living rooms across the country and boxing champion, Joe Lewis, the "Brown Bomber," came to represent so much more than the zenith of a sport. Grade 4–up.

Set on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in the years immediately following World War II, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, focuses on Tayo, a young vet of mixed Indian ancestry. The book is Tayo's story of return and redemption. "The novel is very deliberately a ceremony in itself—demanding but confident and beautifully written," said the Boston Globe.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is an unsettling, unsentimental, poetic novel, set in World War II and narrated by Death. This is not an easy read, but it is a book that can change a life. Grade 9–up.

We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson is a sumptuous history of Negro League Baseball from its beginning in the 1920s to 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the major leagues’ color barrier. Dazzling, almost iconic paintings illustrate the easygoing, conversational, historically detailed text, and all in all the book illuminates more than baseball in the '20s and '30s—it is a history of all of us. Grade 4–up.

The narrator of Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Gray, 15-year-old Lina, begins "They took me in my nightgown." In 1941, Stalin is deporting families from Lithuania and imprisoning them in Siberia where daily life is brutal. It is the slim possibility of survival that provides hope. This book is similar to Esther Hautzig's earlier autobiographical novel, Endless Steppe in that it is similarly themed and equally searing. In Endless Steppe, 10-year-old Esther Rudmin is arrested with her family in Poland as "enemies of the people" and exiled to Siberia. Grade 6–up.

Homestead, by Rosina Lippi, is a series of interconnected vignettes beginning in 1909, about life in Rosenau, a small isolated village in the Austrian Alps. The villagers harvest, tend animals, and make cheese. Against this pastoral backdrop are all of life's vicissitudes. The prose is clean and clear, each chapter is seemingly autonomous but as we see an event (over generations) from different characters' points of view, the life of Rosenau becomes increasingly rich and complex. This novel won the 1998 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first fiction and was short-listed for the 2001 Orange Prize.

Complete List of Titles
  • When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
  • A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot
  • The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
  • No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War by Anita Lobel
  • Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
  • The War to End All Wars: World War I by Russell Freedman
  • Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney
  • Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson
  • Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
  • The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig
  • Homestead by Rosina Lippi
For more information

See here to search the California literature recommendations. Choose “historical fiction” as one of your search parameters.

This Ask a Master Teacher entry has some other helpful resources for finding historical literature.

Seeking U.S. History Books for 9th and 11th Graders

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Cigarette card, Robinson Crusoe, New York Public Library
Question

I am interested in locating a list of U.S. history fiction and nonfiction books that are appropriate for use with my U.S. history students, grades nine and 11.

Answer

Some of the best and most easily available sources for lists of appropriate books for 9th and 11th graders come from school districts and teachers who have compiled them and shared them on the internet.

An excellent example of this can be found at Oxnard Unified High School District. This annotated list includes both fiction and nonfiction titles related to high school U.S. history. Another example of this type of list has been posted by a classroom teacher. This list highlights nonfiction titles on a range of U.S. history topics but also includes a brief list of recommended historical fiction.

Libraries are another obvious choice for booklists. Library Booklists is a clearinghouse of public libraries across the nation, providing links to lists of books put together by librarians on diverse topics. You can search for nonfiction as well as historical fiction lists, and it differentiates between young adult and children's literature.

The American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has annotated lists of suggestions for teen readers. Many, but not all, of their nonfiction history titles relate to U.S. history. They also have excellent annotated lists of fiction, but they do not differentiate historical fiction from general works.

Another approach to finding books would be to use a search engine to generate a personalized list on a particular topic. The reading measurement company Lexile has an online feature that can be used to search for book titles. To use Lexile, go to Find a Book, then follow the prompts to enter information about your students (for average 9th-11th grade readers the Lexile range would be 880–1165), and then you enter your search terms. The California Department of Education also has a reading list generator. These sites can be tricky, and you may want to try a variety of searches as often a search will bring up too few results or so many that it is hard to tell what might be worthwhile.

Finally, there are many excellent high school booklists on specific topics that might be of interest to you. Check out the lists for Black History Month, (extensive and divided by grade level, but not annotated), and Lincoln and the Civil War which offers an annotated list on the topic for young adults.

Kudos to you for bringing books into your curriculum! And happy reading.

Historic Stories, Fictional Accounts: Achieving Multiperspectivity

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Photography, for heart and mind, 21 Jan 2010, Flickr CC
Question

What is the significance of examining historical events from multiple perspectives (i.e. use of fiction, nonfiction, etc.) on an elementary school level?

Answer
Multiple Perspectives

Examining historical events from multiple perspectives introduces elementary students to core aspects of history and historical thinking. And as with much of history, it has relevance to helping students become more prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship, college, and career.

Imagine that students are learning about early American settlements. Depending on where you teach and your curriculum, this might include learning about the Mayflower and Plymouth, Jamestown, or the Missions in California. Students read stories or textbook accounts of these early settlements and they learn the difficulties of the passage here and making a new life in a foreign land.

Students can learn to ask, whose voices are we not hearing?

Yet, this is only part of the story and to get a fuller picture, students need to consider the perspectives of those not necessarily represented in these accounts—most obviously, the perspective of the indigenous peoples who were here when the settlers arrived. (Viewing the settlements from this alternative perspective is not necessarily easy given that the historical record is incomplete, but using artifacts, surviving legends, historic sites, or even settlers’ first hand accounts can help students imagine this perspective.) Considering this missing perspective helps students recognize and articulate that people can experience the same event in different ways.

Students can learn to ask, whose voices are we not hearing? What perspective is not represented? What alternative stories are told about these events? Did participants in these events agree on their meaning? What might account for these differences in perspective?

This is a key piece of doing history—understanding that there are multiple perspectives and multiple stories that surround historical phenomena. And elementary students can learn this. Connections to daily life can be made, as students are familiar with such things as sifting through playmates’ differing accounts of recess events. Multiple perspectives can also be introduced in very concrete ways to young students. They could view something from different locations to see different aspects of it, or use tools such as a cardboard picture frame to see how a frame is selective--including some aspects of the view while ignoring others.

Ideally, students can learn to ask the same questions of daily life and sources that they learn to ask of history: Whose voices are we not hearing? What are the other stories that people tell about this issue? How and why do they differ?

Fiction & Nonfiction

You ask particularly about the use of fiction and nonfiction to teach multiple perspectives. See this entry about “book sets” a strategy for including both to engage students and guide them toward deep understanding of historical events. Also see this roundtable where panelists discuss the use of fiction in the elementary classroom or this blog.

Using both fiction and nonfiction allows students to engage with multiple kinds of text and it allows you, as teacher, to use the texts for different purposes. Good fiction can be used to engage and interest students in the past and help them imagine that past or create a picture of the historical context of the events you are studying. Non-fictional texts, such as primary sources, can be used to explore an experience or perspective in more depth and to represent missing perspectives. Both can be used to challenge students to look across and synthesize texts to create a fuller picture of the past.

A critical aspect of using both fiction and nonfiction texts together is that they give you an opportunity to teach students the difference between the two.

A critical aspect of using both fiction and non-fiction texts together is that they give you an opportunity to teach students the difference between the two. Young students can learn that history is an evidentiary discipline and strives for the most accurate and complete picture of the past, whereas fiction does not have this constraint. While there are examples of fictional stories that try to do the same, this basic distinction is an important one for students to learn.

Teaching young students that history includes multiple stories and perspectives aligns with the Common Core State Standards, and can prepare students for future history classes and academic work. But, more significantly, it is critical for helping students understand that their perspective can be partial and does not represent all peoples—it can help them develop empathy and be more skeptical of the single account as the one true answer in our complex world.

For more information

Also see this Ask a Master Teacher answer about the manner in which multiperspectivity can be used in the history classroom.

The Book Blitz Classroom Activity: Getting Students to Read Historical Novels

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Eighth-grade American history educator Eric Langhorst describes the "Book Blitz," an activity he uses to encourage students to explore the historical fiction novels available in their school library.

To listen to this "how to" podcast, scroll down to the blog archive links along the right hand side of the site. From there select "2009" and "January." Now scroll down to the end of the Friday, January 09, 2009 entry; and push play.

Valerie Tripp's Looking Backward, Looping Forward: How to Make a Period of History Matter to Your Students

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Photo, New Boston Tinwhistle, January 21, 2005, Cindy Funk, Flickr, cc
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When I visit classrooms and Brownie troops to talk about the historical fiction that I write for American Girl, one child always asks, "Where do the ideas for the stories come from?" My answer is simple. I say, "You." Whenever I sit down to write a story, I begin the same way. I begin by thinking about my reader's life right now, in 2011, and I try to create a lovely, silky, satiny ribbon of connection that starts with her and flows through time and connects her to my character, who lived long ago and often far away. That ribbon of connection is made up of the things they have in common: school, family, friends, challenges, triumphs, and chores. The ribbon is flexible, but it has integrity.

How can you make a period of history matter to your students? Begin where they are, right now, and connect them to the past by telling them what their lives would be like if they lived back then. Begin with the practical, the tangible, the everyday. For example, what would they be learning in school? What would they have for lunch? How would they celebrate their birthdays? What chores would they be expected to do? Then stretch a bit to the abstract: What would their parents' and teachers' aspirations be for them? What would their own hopes and dreams be? You’ll make a long ago time matter to your students today if you enable them to look backward and loop forward, to compare their lives now to children's lives in the past; and practical, child-oriented facts are your tools to do so.

Befriending the Past
I believe it is emotion—making a person-to-person connection, imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes—that sparks, fuels, and maintains a student's interest in a period of history.

Students take pride in newfound factual knowledge. You'll be calling upon the very nature of your students when you give them information, because your students are inquisitive, playful, and imaginative. They are empathetic, too, and indeed, I believe it is emotion—making a person-to-person connection, imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes—that sparks, fuels, and maintains a student's interest in a period of history. To make a period matter to your students, to help them care about it, try to find nonfiction stories (think of The Diary of Anne Frank, for example) or good historical fiction about children who lived in that period. If your students identify with that child, if they get to be friends with that child, they’ll care about the social, economic, and political forces shaping the child's life.

In my books, I try to have my character's personality and life situation grow organically from her place, culture, and period. I make my character's problems girl-sized versions of the major conflicts of the time. The character's personality is a metaphor for what was going on in American history when she lived. For example, Felicity wants to be independent, as does the colony she lives in, Virginia. Both learn that independence means self-governance, not self-indulgence. My hope is that my readers will become friends with Felicity, so that the issues, conflicts, philosophies, fashions, games, discoveries, manners, arts, and inventions that influence Felicity's world matter to them. If Felicity is a bore or a drip or a dork or a goody-two-shoes or a pain or an implausible character, my reader won't be interested in her or in the period she lives in; that’s why tapping into the nature and interests of real children is so essential. That's why when a reader asks where the ideas for the stories come from, I answer: you!

That's why when a reader asks where the ideas for the stories come from, I answer: you!

Capturing your students' interest with child-oriented facts and maintaining and enriching that interest through stories that will engage their emotions are two good ways to make history matter. But there's a third element, I think, that is intangible but important. A period in history will matter to your students if it helps them. Learning about how people dealt with adversity in the past can help your students meet challenges in their own lives with courage and strength. It can shore them up, encourage them, prepare them, and validate them. So, to make a period of history matter to your students, you have to tell the truth about it. Be honest but not cynical. Be earnest. Even shameful and horrifying events have a lot to teach us; indignation is as powerful as pride. And the people of whom we can rightly be proud have a lot to teach us, too. To make history matter to your students, let it inspire them. Let it send them out into the world with a spirit of adventure, with confidence, curiosity, and conviction.

For more information

Valerie Tripp started out Teachinghistory.org's school year asking, "Why use historical fiction in the classroom?" Look for two more entries this year by her!

Loving History's Stories

Article Body

Earlier this year I received an email from the National Science Teachers Association with the “Five reasons they love science”:

  1. Science has stories.
  2. Science has mysteries.
  3. Science can make us laugh.
  4. Science challenges us.
  5. Science is everywhere.

I love science, and found myself in agreement while reading this list. I also love history, and for history buffs, it’s easy to simply replace the word “science” with the word “history.” The fact that history has stories is one of the easiest ways to make it come alive for students, especially at the elementary level. We can capitalize on the excitement that students have for a good story while helping them gain a better understanding of and appreciation for history.

Students’ reading diets need to have a healthy balance of fiction and nonfiction texts.

I want my students to love history, and to have an enthusiasm for studying the past. I want them to get caught up in the mystery and the emotion of the past, and I want them to wrestle with the challenges that history presents us with. This makes books in the historical fiction genre a natural path for me to explore with them. Historical fiction helps to tell stories by giving us characters we can connect with and historic settings we can envision. It draws us into history.

But is that enough? Is captivating students and telling them a good story my only goal, or are students best served if their experiences with historical fiction lead them to a deeper understanding of history? While historical fiction may help immerse them in the stories of our past, and while they may glean some historical facts along the way, I think we may be dropping the ball if that is all we expose our students to. Students’ reading diets need to have a healthy balance of fiction and nonfiction texts.

How do I help my students figure out what is history and what is imagination?

Great fiction books can certainly be a springboard for nonfiction. When my class reads Scott O’Dell’s Streams to the River, River to the Sea as part of our study on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, we will use it as a launch into further research. The book immerses students in the lives of the adventurers, and O’Dell does a great job of weaving in historical facts. But a good deal of the story is fictionalized. So how do I help my students figure out what is history and what is imagination?

In her book Making Sense of History (1), Myra Zarnowski presents several guiding questions to help students dig deeper into historical fiction:

  • How does the book help me understand daily life in the past?
  • Could the events described in the book have happened? What evidence do I have?
  • Which events really happened? How do I know?
  • Which characters really existed? How do I know?

These questions help students break open a historical fiction text and lead to further inquiry through the use of nonfiction resources, both primary and secondary. By helping students sort out what is fact and what is fiction we teach them to be critical thinkers, to value historical research, and to try to see multiple perspectives as well as the big picture.

We are called to make sure that the use of historical fiction is tempered with nonfiction on multiple fronts. As a result of the added emphasis on informational texts in the new Common Core Standards, many districts and schools are working to increase students’ exposure to nonfiction texts.

While English classes will still include healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading more nonfiction texts as they get older, to prepare them for the kinds of material they will read in college and careers. In the fourth grade, students should be reading about the same amount from “literary” and “informational” texts, according to the standards; in the eighth grade, 45 percent should be literary and 55 percent informational, and by 12th grade, the split should be 30/70. (2)

Another consideration is the quality of many contemporary nonfiction trade books. Many adults remember the nonfiction of our childhood as dry, dense, and dreary. The majority of nonfiction books written for children today have so much more to offer. They are written in engaging formats and often include powerful pictures and graphics.

Nonfiction books written for children today . . .are written in engaging formats and often include powerful pictures and graphics.

For one sampling, check out the books listed for the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Anything but dry, these books are page-turners. They have incredible graphic components, engaging storylines, and a range of fantastic content. They show that we don’t have to fictionalize the past to make it interesting.

We get more bang for our education buck if we remember that it’s not an either/or situation, but that both genres can help us meet our educational goal of preparing the next generation of critical thinkers, historians, and citizens.

Footnotes

1 Myra Zarnowski, Making Sense of History (New York, NY: Scholastic, 2006).

2 Fernanda Santos, “A Trial Run for School Standards that Encourage Deeper Thought,” The New York Times, April 24, 2011.

Teaser

While historical fiction has the power to captivate students and draw them in to history, they are best served if teachers partner fiction with nonfiction texts. This enables them to critically think about the stories being presented and to analyze them for historical accuracy and significance.

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