To start off with I am a total nerd and love history! I love reading about people and incidences that happened so many years ago. I also listen to podcasts like Stuff You Missed in History Class, Lore, The Sottish History Podcast, and The British History Podcast. I’m about halfway through a podcast about the history of the Scottish Labor Part, I know exciting stuff. Which makes historical fiction is probably one of my top favorite genres to read. I will almost always choose a historical fiction over contemporary fiction.
I found the YA Historical Lit timeline: http://www.epicreads.com/blog/the-age-of-ya-a-timeline-of-historical-fiction/ to be so interesting, unique and helpful. I think that this is a great tool to have if a student where to ask for a specific timeline to read from. Historical fiction can also take on many forms. Such as time traveling to the Battle of Culloden in Scotland of or Captain America helping bring an end to WWII. Historical fiction needs to be taken with a grain of salt (Captain America didn’t actually participate in WWII) but I think using historical fiction as a way to get interested in history is wonderful. A few trends that I noticed was how most of the books featured had female characters on the covers. I really liked that female characters where highlighted because during most times in early history (Ancient Rome, The Dark Ages, etc.) women didn’t have much of a voice. Something else that I noticed was that in the historical inserts that where put in included many books that are well known.
History is a hard subject to get students interested in. It can be boring and dense with so many dates to remember. Historical fiction is a gate way into that. For me, history is just as important as reading and writing. History shows us where we come from, the accomplishments that men and women have achieved, and the horrors of war and social injustices. History should’t be censored (yes it can be adjusted for younger ages) because when it is censored we loose the ability to teach the mistakes of others, in hopes that we and future generations don’t repeat them.