Genre Spotlight: Historical Fiction

POPULAR TITLES:

• 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 like Selznick’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!