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.
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