You see this section here? It's been growing on me lately! Up until recently, I've read maybe one or two historical fiction books a year. But this year, I've read a few that I've really enjoyed. Admittedly, the historical fiction genre can be a tough sell with students, but I am very optimistic about some of the titles I've read lately (such as Honeyman's Fire Horse Girl and Anderson's Fever 1793.
About our Historical Fiction section:
NUMBER OF BOOKS IN THE SECTION: 402
GENRE LABEL COLOR: yellow (the color of old newspapers)
POPULAR TITLES:
NEW & UPCOMING 2013 TITLES TO WATCH FOR:
Middle school:
High school:
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENRE/ WHAT CONSTITUTES A HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK IN MY LIBRARY:
TRENDING:
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas(Boyne)
- Code Talker (Bruchac)
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Selznick)
- The Red Necklace (Gardner)
- Ruby Red (Gier)
- Uprising (Haddix)
- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Kelly)
- Prisoners in the Palace (MacColl)
- Assassin (Myers)
- The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins (Myers)
- Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale (Napoli)
- Ghost Girl: A Blue Ridge Mountain Story (Ray)
- Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood (Richards)
- A Break With Charity (Rinaldi)
- Hunted: Brind series, book 2(Russell)
- Song of the Sparrow (Sandell)
- Wonderstruck (Selznick)
- Between Shades of Gray (Sepetys)
- Distant Waves (Weyn)
- Countdown (Wiles)
- Someone Named Eva (Wolf)
- The Book Thief (Zusak)
NEW & UPCOMING 2013 TITLES TO WATCH FOR:
Middle school:
- Al Capone Does My Homework (Choldenko)
- Casualties of War: Book 4 (Lynch)
- Finding Zasha (Barrow)
- Hero on a Bicycle (Hughes)
- Odette's Secrets (MacDonald)
- One Came Home (Timberlake)
- P.S. Be Eleven (Williams-Garcia)
- Prisoner B-3087 (Gratz)
- Red River Stallion (Harrison)
- Soldier Dog (Angus)
- Tracks (Wilson)
- Warriors in the Crossfire (Flood)
- Hattie Ever After (Larson)
- The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist (Engle)
- Maid of Secrets (McGowan)
- Nobody's Secret (MacColl)
- Then (Gleitzman)
- Victoria Rebels (Meyer)
High school:
- Out of the Easy (Sepetyz)
- Tarnish (Longshore)
- The Caged Graves (Salerni)
- In the Shadow of Blackbirds (Winters)
- Belle Epoque (Ross)
- Cinders & Sapphires (Rasheed)
- Five 4ths of July (Hughes)
- Gilt (Longshore)
- Heart of Glass (Gould)
- A Moment Comes (Bradbury)
- Starstruck (Shukert)
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENRE/ WHAT CONSTITUTES A HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK IN MY LIBRARY:
- set prior to 1975 (see my justification in "Troubleshooting" below)
- historical events are a major part of the story
- does not fit better into another genre (such as Steampunk, which is Victorian period by definition, or High Fantasy, which includes medieval fantasy)
- realistic in nature; there is no magical or fantastic element in it that would qualify it as fantasy
TRENDING:
- anything I book talk tends to do very well. On the "most popular" list above, I actively book talked 9 titles with classes in the past few months. Coupling war books with Vietnam protest music (I used and discussed CCR's "Fortunate Son") really got students excited about the Vietnam titles.
- My students especially love anything about the Titanic disaster, major weather events, The Holocaust, Vietnam War
- need more highly visual novels likeSelznick's Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck(both are told with text and full-page illustrations (about 50/50)
- diary formats are always a hit, no matter the genre
TROUBLESHOOTING:
- Deciding what is "historical" and what is "recent history"--Is the 1980s "historical"? Maybe, but not in my library. Setting my own birth year helps me be consistent about the cut-off date AND keeps me from feeling "historical" myself!
- Where to put modern-day war books? Afghanistan? Persian Gulf? In my library, both go into Realistic Fiction.
- Section popularity. If I didn't book talk these books, many of them would never get checked out. Of my 18 genre sections, this one probably needs the most teacher and librarian endorsement.
- What to do with time travel stories? I'm still struggling with this one. Right now, I just go with my gut--some books feel like Historical Fiction, but most could go into other genres. For example, I put My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century (Harris) into Romance/Chick Lit based mainly on the chick lit "feel" of the story when I read it. Ruby Red, on the other hand, went to Historical Fiction. Why? Well, I could not put it somewhere else. It feels historical more than sci-fi. I know that's not very scientific of me, but it's the best I've got right now. Would love to hear suggestions on this one!
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