Posts Tagged historical fiction

A Novel Approach to Readers’ Advisory

By on September 9, 2019   /   Articles, For Librarians  

Normally when a middle-grader comes into the library looking for a book, librarians will focus on a title’s genre and subject matter. They’ll try to match these up to the reader’s interests, such as mysteries, sports books, or science fiction. But it can be tough to pin down the exact type of experience that our readers are looking for. Dominique McCafferty, the Childrens’ Collection Management Librarian at Library System & Services, recommends using a different method of finding the right read, using the super genres developed by Neal Wyatt and Joyce Saricks in their book,The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (3rd ed).

The super genres that Wyatt and Saricks use focus more on the experience of reading. Their genres are: Adrenaline, Intellect, Landscape, and Emotion. Each of these can contain a number of different subjects and interests. In this post, we’ll show you how the traditional genre of mysteries can translate into all of these different super genres. We’ll also give examples of how to broaden your reader’s interests using these same categories.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgBooks in the adrenaline genre are the ones that readers will finish in one-sitting. Adrenaline books are all about speed. Tightly plotted, and fast paced, Thrillers, suspense, and adventure are among the traditional genre types in the adrenaline category. Mysteries like The 39 Clues are a great example of mysteries that fall into the adrenaline genre. They Cahills race around the globe to beat their greedy relatives to the clues. They’re adventurous because the Cahills often face danger from not only their relatives but also the environment and other enemies. Ultimately, The 39 Clues are mysteries because the Cahills work to figure out the clues that were left behind by their grandmother and solve the mystery of their family. But because of their fast pace and the thrilling adventure, the series also fits well within the adrenaline genre.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgMysteries would normally be found in the intellect genre. This is the genre of books that challenge the mind with language, puzzles, and science. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin would be a classic example of mystery in this genre with it’s puzzles and wordplay.  Books in the intellect genre can also have lyrical language. Science fiction also tends to fall into this genre because of the science and technology involved. In The Westing Game, a wealthy businessman leaves his fortune to the tenants of a neighboring apartment complex. But first, they need to solve the mystery that he’s left them. It’s a similar plot to The 39 Clues, but the focus in The Westing Game is not on adventure. In fact, most of the story takes place at the apartment complex. Instead, The Westing Game focuses on the puzzles left to each pair of heirs, making it an ideal selection for the intellect genre.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgIf mysteries are normally at home in the intellect genre, then the world-building genre would be the realm of fantasy. But not always. Books in the landscape genre transport readers to a wholly different realm. For example Kate Milford’s Greenglass House is the rich, spooky setting for her mystery of the same name. Sitting on the edge of a cliff, Greenglass House is an inn that welcomes smugglers. Mysterious guests pour into the inn during the winter months when it is normally quiet, and each has a story. When guests belongings start to go missing, it’s up to Milo, the son of the inns’s owners, and Meddy, the cook’s daughter to figure out the mystery of Greenglass House.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgFinally, the emotion genre brings out strong emotions in its readers. Swoony stories of first crushes, touching family stories, and even horror stories all fall into this genre. Thornhill by Pam Smy is just such a horror story. Part graphic novel, Thornhill is a spine-tingling mystery about the last days of Thornhill Institute, and the new girl in town who is intrigued by its tragedy. In dual narratives, Thornhill tells the story of Mary, one of the last residents of the Institute who is bullied by the other girls, and much later, Ella, a lonely girl who becomes fascinated with Thornhill and the girl she sometimes sees still inside. Mary’s story is told through her diary entries, while Ella’s is told through black and white illustrations. It’s a spooky, atmospheric read, but it’s also a mystery, as Ella discovers the truth about the girl in Thornhill.

These titles would all appeal to mystery lovers, and the super genres help librarians narrow down the type of mystery a reader is looking for. But these categories help readers expand their horizons. For example, a reader interested in the fast-paced adrenaline genre might enjoy the I Survived series by Lauren Tarshis. These historical fiction adventures place kids at the center of real life disasters. Or  they might like Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia. In this fantasy, a seventh-grader plunges into a conflict between gods, heroes, and monsters.

In the intellect genre, readers can be as intrigued by novels in verse like Aida Salazar’s The Moon Within. But they may also enjoy the STEM thriller, Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation by Stuart Gibbs.

These all-encompassing genres are a great tool for librarians to help readers narrow down exactly what they’re looking for. And they also help readers to find new books that might interest them.

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Go Visual-Spatial with Maps and Middle Grade Books

By on August 9, 2019   /   For Teachers  

I came across the phrase “carto-literate” in an article last week. The author was referring to geography skills, but it made me think of all the cool map-based activities one can offer readers of middle grade books. Maps, globes, and online mapping tools maintain a strong role in the study of history, geography, science, and math; however, the great benefits of using maps as learning tools can be extended to the reading experience, as well.  If you haven’t thought about utilizing map activities for literature selections in your classroom, home school, or library, consider these awesome benefits:

  • Maps immediately call up the use of Visual-Spatial skills, and might engage readers who are not quite as Verbal-Linguistic as others.
  • Maps promote flexible, creative thinking through the use of to-scale renderings and symbols.
  • Maps directly connect to math, science, technology, and research skills, and they promote discussions on cultural topics of inclusivity and acceptance. They also encourage an understanding of history, as borders and place names change over time due to migration, conflict, and political transition.
  • Maps also inspire the imagination with the notion of travel and adventure; after all, it’s easy to envision yourself as an explorer or treasure-seeker when you have a map in hand!

These activity ideas involving maps might inspire a more fulfilling reading experience, and will promote thinking and discussion on these and other titles.

1. Using a world map, locate and mark the literary settings of books that might be new to your library or books on suggested or curricular reading lists. Settings can be approximate or specific; sometimes, while specific names of roads or towns are fictionalized, the state or region is identified—giving students just enough context to pinpoint the setting on a map. For example, these recent MG books have specific or general settings that are “mappable”:

The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman (Chennai, India)

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier (Northern CA)

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Medieval France)

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome (Chicago, IL)

North to Benjamin by Alan Cumyn (Dawson, Yukon)

Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina (South Florida)

2. Use Google Maps to explore a realistic, named setting and discuss plot conflicts in terms of the story’s geography. Students can zoom in on locations, study city layouts, and even “drive around” neighborhoods in Street View. For example, when reading Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Ninth Ward, students can investigate through Google Maps the geography of New Orleans, and make connections to the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

3. Pinpoint the settings of books that share a historical time period on a map, and consider the ways in which location and culture impacted the plot and characters. For example, on a map of the world, mark the literary settings of books like these that take place in the time of WWII:

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli (Warsaw, Poland)

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (London, England and vicinity)

The End of the Line by Sharon E. McKay (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff (Rockaway, NY)

 

4. Maps can help promote comprehension and increase the emotional value of a story when used in conjunction with the travels of a character. For example, readers can use a world map to trace the journey of Ebo, a refugee from Ghana, in Illegal, a graphic novel by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin and illustrated by Giovanni Rigano.

 

5. In an exploration of their own world-building skills, readers can create maps for middle grade fiction with geography context clues. For example, readers can use close reading skills, logic, and imagination to draw a map of locations in Erin Entrada Kelly’s Hello, Universe, or for works that have a fantasy or purely fictionalized setting. Many MG fantasies showcase beautiful maps of the story’s settings, like Jaleigh Johnson’s The Door to the Lost. Readers can use these already-created maps to note plot points and trace the paths of characters.

6. A start-of-the-year icebreaker I’ve tried with success involves a world map, displayed in the classroom: each student shares the location farthest from home to which he or she has traveled and pins a marker on the map. Put a literary spin on this idea, and have readers share the book title they’ve read with a setting that is farthest from home. Each student can mark the map with the book title and author. A longer project idea might involve individual student presentations of plot summaries or book reviews.

Perhaps you’ll find a map activity here that suits your reader or students! Good luck to parents, teachers, librarians, writers, and readers of MG as we all head back to the classroom this school year.

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When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit Still Relevant

By on July 4, 2019   /   Curriculum Tie-in, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers  

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

When beloved children’s book author Judith Kerr passed away in May at the age of 95, I’d been about two weeks into reading to my two sons her classic and still relevant middle-grade novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.

This was a seminal book for me as a child: I read it over and over again and vividly remember parts of it to this day. I had great feelings—and memories— for the book, but never particularly thought about who wrote it. When I moved to London 25 years later however, I discovered that in fact its author, Judith Kerr, is the creator of some 30 picture books. This includes one of the most classic children’s books here in England: The Tiger Who Came to Tea which I had immediately fallen in love with.

Two Sequels

In that first year we lived in London, I made another surprising discovery, at least to me: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit actually has two sequels—Bombs on Aunt Dainty which is more upper middle grade or possibly YA, and A Small Person Far Away, which I would also classify as YA or possibly even adult. They’re all fictionalized versions of Judith Kerr’s own story of being a refugee from Germany as Hitler came to power. 

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit starts when its main character, Anna, is nine, and ends when she is 11 going on 12, which is roughly my own age range when I read this book over and over again. Now an adult myself, it was fascinating to read the continuation of Anna’s life into adulthood. And in essence the three books together are a bildungsroman: the story of the artist as a young woman. But while I greatly enjoyed discovering and reading the two sequels, something held me back from re-reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit as an adult. I think I was probably afraid—what if it didn’t hold up to how I remembered it? And when considering a beloved childhood book to read to my kids there is always the extra risk of them hating it, not getting what’s so great about it, or finding it BORE-ING!

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit Still Relevant

But the story in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which was first published in 1971 and takes place in 1933-36, seems highly relevant right now and I sensed my sons were at a good age for it —at least to try. In any case, I needn’t have worried. The two boys, ages eight and ten, were enthralled. Every night they would literally beg me to read, and read more! In fact, the book not only holds up to how I remember it, but is even deeper.

There were several occasions on reading it—and not ones that I remembered from childhood—in which I was moved to tears. And reading the chapters each night with my sons provoked great questions and discussions. The story is not only so relevant now because of the refugee crisis, but it introduces children to Hitler coming to power and to anti-semitism—as well as the idea of racism—in a forthright and age-appropriate way. It “talks up” to them in a way that both the ten-year-old and the eight-year-old could handle and appreciate.

Pink Rabbit and Writing Craft

But it’s as a writer now myself that I marveled most.

Children's Book Still Relevant Today

I can’t find the cover image I remember from childhood but I adore this one from the edition I read with my sons

Judith Kerr expertly crafted When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit yet with the lightest of touches so it’s only now that I realize what a feat the book is.

She is telling the story of her life and her family’s experiences, but instead of it being a series of “this happened,” “and then this happened,” it is all harnessed to a cohesive story that has a beautiful narrative shape. She writes in an afterward that although she “filled in the gaps with invented detail” and was writing in the third person about a girl called Anna (because she felt that as a middle-aged English woman she was no longer the same little German girl that had fled the Nazis) she decided early on in the project “that all the important things must be true—the things that happened, how I felt about them, what we, our friends and the places we lived in were like.”

I have recently been reading many books on writer’s craft as I work on a major redrafting of my novel, and I am struck and awestruck at how Judith Kerr accomplished this. For one thing, there is an efficiency to each vignette so that no episode is random (even if it might delightfully seem that way at first) and each comes together in service of the greater story or theme—which is that Anna doesn’t feel like a refugee because as long as her family has stayed together that is her home.

For another thing, Judith Kerr has a way of mining the quiet moments for their drama and humor, while what is truly frightening or deeply upsetting (especially read through the eyes of an adult) are handled with a feather-weight dexterity so that they are not made light of but they are not so scary so as to no longer be appropriate for a children’s book. I think a lot of this comes down to her success at seeing everything through a child’s eye and staying true to that perspective. She doesn’t shy away from depressing moments, that sometimes one feels low, or that bad things happen. But through it all there’s a general positivity and the assurance of grown ups.

Overall, re-reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit with my sons, I experienced both nostalgia for how I felt about it as a child, a re-ignition of my love for it, and an all-new feeling of admiration and aesthetic connection. It gave me great joy to read. I wish I could write like her! I will continue to study her novels and figure out just how she did it. Judith Kerr’s work is a huge inspiration to me and children’s literature is richer for her legacy.

 

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