Issues-driven Historical Fiction for Kids

I learn history best through fiction. I love experiencing the effects of history on people’s lives through fictional characters’ lives. Any time I read something or watch something that deals with Civil Rights (or the lack thereof during our nation’s history), I’m changed. I am grateful for how far we’ve come, but I also am reminded that those same thoughts and actions are still haunting us.

I enjoy fiction that causes me to think in that way, but I really wonder if kids get it. My daughter has enjoyed learning about the Civil Rights movement, and she respects Martin Luther King, but do kids like to read this sort of book? And do they understand?

Dear America: With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney is a perfect example of a great story — a school story — about a very strong twelve-year-old girl who wants to be a doctor. When she earns the chance to leave her run-down, second-rate school on the poor (Black) side of town to go to the richer all-White school, she and her family leap at the chance. But then the anti-segregationists step in and try to force her out. At first, her family is fighting for the rights of all the kids, even though she is the only one willing to make the valiant effort to attend, but when the local dairy provider comes out for segregation in the newspaper and the whole town decides to boycott dairy, it becomes a harder battle, and Dawnie and her family end up being resented by much of the town.

I make it sound like a dramatic heroic story, and it is, but I think that kids (girls, really) will relate to her — looking forward to her birthday, competing for an honor at school, making a new best friend, sticking up for her little brother. That’s what makes this such a nice book. The Dear America books deftly weave history and plot, and this one is no different.

AUDIO NOTES: I also listened to this on audiobook, which the library had available before my review copy came in. It was a great version. It’s hard to voice a child, but Channie Waites conveyed Dawnie’s enthusiasm and her questions perfectly.

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling takes on school integration as well.

This book is based on the true story of two girls. Sylvia Mendez and her family rent a house that is vacated when Aki Munemitsu and her family are sent to a Japanese internment camp in the World War II-induced paranoia.

When Aki must leave, she can only take a few things. Everything else must be destroyed, lest the officials find something that would mark them as anti-American. She can’t take her doll, but she can’t bear to destroy her either, so she tucks her away high in the closet.

When Sylvia moves in, she finds the beautiful traditional Japanese doll and tucks her on her bed beside her own traditional Mexican doll. The girls end up corresponding and and even becoming friends as Aki survives the uncertainty of the camp (Where is her father? Will they be reunited? When will they be able to leave?) while Sylvia battles segregation.

When her aunt tries to register Sylvia and her brother for the school that her half-white/half-Mexican children attend, she is told that her niece and nephew have to attend the Mexican school that is much further away. Sylvia’s dad fights for her to attend, all the way to court in a much lesser known — but earlier — court battle versus the Orange County school system in California.

This short book looks at two groups that experienced discrimination during this post-war time in the US. It’s a little heavier on history than plot, reading almost like that very engaging type of non-fiction that tells a story using the format of a novel, which might make it a good fit for kids who prefer non-fiction to fiction, and conversely it could introduce pure fiction lovers to the wonders of well-written non-fiction style.

*****

Though the Cybils Middle Grade fiction shortlists have already been posted, I still have some reviews to post that I read as a round I panelist. These two books were both nominated.

Jennifer Donovan enjoys historical fiction if the history and the fiction is right, but middle grade historical fiction is even better. She blogs at Snapshot.