Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms

by Sara L. Schwebel

For more than three decades, the same children's historical novels have been taught across the United States. Honored for their literary quality and appreciated for their alignment with social studies curricula, the books have flourished as schools moved from whole-language to phonics and from student-centered learning to standardized testing. Books like Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry stimulate children's imagination, transporting them into the American past and projecting them into an American future. As works of historical interpretation, however, many are startlingly out of step with current historiography and social sensibilities, especially with regard to race. Unlike textbooks, which are replaced on regular cycles and subjected to public tugs-of-war between the left and right, historical novels have simply--and quietly--endured. Taken individually, many present troubling interpretations of the American past. But embraced collectively, this classroom canon provides a rare pedagogical opportunity: it captures a range of interpretive voices across time and place, a kind of "people's history" far removed from today's state-sanctioned textbooks.

Teachers who employ historical novels in the classroom can help students recognize and interpret historical narrative as the product of research, analytical perspective, and the politics of the time. In doing so, they sensitize students to the ways in which the past is put to moral and ideological uses in the present.

Featuring separate chapters on American Indians, war, and slavery, Child-Sized History tracks the changes in how young readers are taught to conceptualize history and the American nation.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2011

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman]

This is a remarkable book. When I can get an affordable copy I will. It challenged all my ideas about using children’s historical fiction to teach history. Schwebel makes the point about the importance of the date as to when a book is written. She looks at Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam is Dead. Her third book is The Astounding Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation. However, she goes into much greater depth. She looks specifically at a number of books in discussing the depiction of Native Americans, war and blacks Comparing Sounder and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is one example. She looks at the history of the writer and of the books themselves. She examines the impact of the Newbery Award on the use of these books which she says present a heritage view of history. That is everything keeps getting better and we are a great nation that has corrected its previous mistakes. She says the books do not look at history the way in which historians do and that although they are perceived as being better than textbooks, they make many of the same errors. One of which is assuming that we can know the past. I have always been aware of this problem in regard to how women are portrayed in children’s historical fiction. She makes the point that we can only have a limited knowledge of the past because we look at it from our present as if it could help us understand now rather than us trying to understand then. She says that it functions primarily by avoiding all of the conflicts that were inherent in the past. This is particularly true in terms of the way in which the books treat slavery. She also makes a fascinating point about how the 1970s books like My Brother Sam and The Summer of My German Soldier in their anti-war stance distort the war, making the Nazi the hero as opposed to the Jews in The Summer and avoiding some of the real issues of the Revolutionary War. She also talks about the way in which blacks are treated in children’s fiction. She talks about how history is neglected in the Common Core and how it is rarely tested. She also talks about the limits of the education that teachers get in terms of thinking historically. They usually take survey courses that use textbooks and make assumptions that there is a single knowable history instead of a variety or perspectives that are modified as different elements come into play. She does talk about the controversy about who writes about whom and the role that the Council on Interracial Books played in raising some consciousness of some of these issues. She also provides a number of pedagogical approaches to history that can utilize these fictions to greater advantage. What is clear is that we have not considered how to teach history to children and do not have teachers who are sufficiently educated in the field in order to be able to get the children thinking like historians and asking questions. She does think that the authors after words and bibliographies are a step in the right direction. She has a great deal of supplementary material. What struck me repeatedly is how conflict is removed or distorted so that we get this heritage view of an ever improving past. I hope that I will read children’s historical fiction more critically in the future. I think some of the lessons might also apply to all the historical mysteries that I read. She does the type of analysis that I would like to be doing when I approach mysteries or any other genre in children’s literature.

[Sally Sugarman]

This is a remarkable book. It challenged all my ideas about using children’s historical fiction to teach history. Schwebel did what Eileen and I did but in greater depth. She makes the point about the importance of the date as to when a book is written. She looks at Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam is Dead as we did. Her third book is The Astounding Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation. It wasn’t written when we did our course. However, she goes into much greater depth. She looks specifically at a number of books in discussing the depiction of Native Americans, war and blackness Comparing Sounder and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is one example. She looks at the history of the writer and of the books themselves. She examines the impact of the Newberry Award on the use of these books which she says present a heritage view of history. That is everything keeps getting better and we are a great nation that has corrected its previous mistakes. She says the books do not look at history the way in which historians do and that although they are perceived as being better than textbooks, they make many of the same errors. One of which is assuming that we can know the past. I have always been aware of this problem in regard to how women are portrayed in children’s historical fiction. She makes the point that we can only have a limited knowledge of the past because we look at it from our present as if it could help us understand now rather than us trying to understand then. She says that it functions primarily by avoiding all of the conflicts that were inherent in the past. This is particularly true in terms of the way in which the books treat slavery. She also makes a fascinating point about how the 1970s books like My Brother Sam and The Summer of My German Soldier in their anti-war stance distort the war, making the Nazi the hero as opposed to the Jews in The Summer and avoiding some of the real issues of the Revolutionary War. She also talks about the way in which blacks are treated in children’s fiction. She talks about how history is neglected in the Common Core and how it is rarely tested. She also talks about the limits of the education that teachers get in terms of thinking historically. They usually take survey courses that use textbooks and make assumptions that there is a single knowable history instead of a variety or perspectives that are modified as different elements come into play. She does talk about the controversy about who writes about whom and the role that the Council on Interracial Books played in raising some consciousness of some of these issues. She also provides a number of pedagogical approaches to history that can utilize these fictions to greater advantage. What is clear is that we have not considered how to teach history to children and do not have teachers who are sufficiently educated in the field in order to be able to get the children thinking like historians and asking questions. She does think that the authors after words and bibliographies are a step in the right direction. She has a great deal of supplementary material. What struck me repeatedly is how conflict is removed or distorted so that we get this heritage view of an ever improving past. I hope that I will read children’s historical fiction more critically in the future. I think some of the lessons might also apply to all the historical mysteries that I read. She does the type of analysis that I would like to be doing when I approach mysteries or any other genre in children’s literature.

[Rebekah]

Fantastic. Thorough research and great close readings of a number of historical novels, covering both how the texts are often taught in middle school classrooms and how the books were received critically. Helped me better understand the interaction of historical fiction and history education in the K-12 system. I'm also interested in the intersection between K-12 educators, publishers, critics, literary prizes and actual readers so this book was right in my wheelhouse. Made me reconsider some of the books I read in middle school too. Highly recommend to (future) teachers, children's lit scholars, and anyone interested in diversifying school reading lists.