Experiencing America's Story through Fiction: Historical Novels for Grades 7-12
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN: 0838912257
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Historical fiction helps young adults imagine the past through the lives and relationships of its protagonists, putting them at the center of fascinating times and places--and the new Common Core Standards allow for use of novels alongside textbooks for teaching history. Perfect for classroom use and YA readers advisory, Crew's book highlights more than 150 titles of historical fiction published since 2000 that are appropriate for seventh to twelfth graders. Choosing award-winners as well as novels which have been well-reviewed in Booklist, The Horn Book, Multicultural Review, History Teach, Journal of American History, and other periodicals, this resource assists librarians and educators by
- Spotlighting novels with a multiplicity of voices from different cultures, races, and ethnicities
- Featuring both YA novels and novels written for adults that are appropriate for teens
- Offering thorough annotations, with an examination of each novel s historical content
- Providing discussion questions and online resources for classroom use that encourage students to think critically about the book and compare ideas and events in the story to actual history
This book will help teachers of history as well as school and public librarians who work with youth to promote a more inclusive understanding of America s story through historical fiction.
Woodvale on its path to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the meeting place of three rivers. Basing her verse novel on the chronology of events, Richards interweaves geographical setting, explanations for the neglect of the dam, and the graphic description of the flood within the story of the romance between sixteen-year-old Celestia Whitcomb, whose parents are wealthy members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, and Peter, a hired hand whose father is a coal miner. The minute-by-minute chronology
2. Related reading: Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC (Texas A&M University Press, 1989). Fletcher, Christine. Ten Cents a Dance. Bloomsbury, 2008. 394 pp. Grades 9–12. NSSTB, 2009; YALSA BB, 2009. When her mother loses her job in a Chicago packing factory in 1941, fifteen-year-old Ruby leaves school and packs pickled pigs’ feet in brine for $12.25 a week. A talented dancer, she is accepted as a taxi dancer at the Starlight Dance Academy. Ruby finds that
appendix. Philip’s rich descriptions of his family’s Newark neighborhood and the glimpse into New Jersey’s mob world add local color to a complex and interesting novel. 1. Analyze the arguments for isolationism. 2. Discuss the reasons for Philip’s father’s convictions about the Lindbergh administration. Shaara, Jeff. No Less Than Victory: A Novel of World War II. Ballantine, 2009. 449 pp. Booklist Top 10 HN, 2010. This last volume in Shaara’s trilogy (which also includes the 2006 The Rising
Workers (www.ufw.org). 4. Related reading: John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath (1939; Penguin, 2006). Manzano, Sonia. The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. Scholastic, 2012. 224 pp. Grades 6–10. ALA Notable, 2013; Américas, 2013; Booklist Top 10 HF, 2013; NSSTB, 2013; Belpré, 2012. Fourteen-year-old Rosa María “Evelyn” del Carmen Serrano is unhappy with her mother’s Puerto Rican decor and hates the customary smells of rotting garbage as she walks through “El Barrio,” Spanish Harlem, in 1969 to her job
has further spurred the use of texts other than standard history textbooks for the teaching of history and social studies.4 Well-researched and well-written historical novels can arguably contribute to the evaluation and comparison of different points of view on historical events and issues. M. T. Anderson’s The Pox Party (volume 1 of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; Candlewick, 2006) and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World (Amistad, 2003), for example, contribute to