From the category archives:

Research and Writing

Historical Books in the Classroom

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By Melissa L.
Over the past twenty years or so, history and historical fiction books have been used more and more as part of the school curriculum. In many of the books I’ve reviewed lately, I’ve noticed an abundance of features that are clearly intended to make the titles classroom-friendly. Bibliographies or “further reading” sections give [...]

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What Is it with Wars?: Overrepresented Areas in Historical Fiction

By Melissa L.
While many areas are underrepresented in historical fiction, there are also some that are way overrepresented. That’s not to say that books about these topics don’t need to be on the market, but they take up an incredibly large share.
In historical fiction about the United States, the overrepresented areas can be expressed in [...]

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Periods and Places: Not All Created Equal

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By Melissa L.
When a fellow children’s author asked for a book set in ancient Rome and no one could recommend anything suitable, I began to think about periods and places that are underrepresented in historical fiction for kids. A few that immediately come to mind include:

Ancient Rome, Greece, and Persia. (Especially Persia. I don’t think [...]

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Changing Historical Details

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Journals and Diaries in Historical Fiction

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By Melissa L.
The diary is a narrative form that’s especially popular in historical fiction for children. The best-known example is probably the Dear America series, which was published by Scholastic in the late 1990’s. The format is very difficult to pull off—your narrator’s voice has to be perfect, and since you’re writing about specific days [...]

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Language Issues (Continued)

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By Melissa L.
Today I’m going to continue last week’s post on language in historical fiction. You’d think that after deciding what to do about foreign words in your novel, you’re pretty much safe. You can just write the rest of your novel in regular English, right? Well, not exactly.

A few years ago, an editor critiquing [...]

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What Constitutes History?

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By Melissa L.
On a discussion board for writers of historical fiction, I recently came across the question “What qualifies as historical?” It’s actually a lot trickier than it sounds. Everybody agrees that ancient Egypt and World War I are historical, but what about the Vietnam War? Where do we cross the line from history to [...]

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