Comments on: Myths, Popular Culture, School

By: Marc Aronson

Marc Aronson — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:35:40 +0000

the problem isn’t so much the sugar rush appeal of historical fiction as it is the lack of knowledge of history. And this is especially true in elementary school where teachers are not specialists and may have only a very vague knowledge of history. That’s the bigger problem.

By: Nancy Feresten

Nancy Feresten — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:42:42 +0000

Okay, with that I agree. There is completely a place for brain-candy books. I just passed the first volume in a series of brain-candy historical novels I’ve been enjoying to my mother, who knows far more history than I do. She pointed out several inaccuracies, which bothered her but of which I had been blissfully unaware. Did I still learn some history from these books (in addition to enjoying the entertaining but highly unlikely plot)? Absolutely. Do I now believe some things that aren’t true? Probably. Does it matter? Probably not. Either my misconceptions will be corrected by a later book or they never will. Either way, I likely have more knowledge (even from what are clearly not particularly accurate books) than I would have acquired otherwise.

I do think there’s a limit, however. When I was in the 3rd grade, I read the entire series Childhoods of Famous Americans and loved it. My mother was shocked, however, the day I brought home the biography of Virginia Dare. The series as a whole is historical fiction masquerading as biography. That one even more so as there’s no evidence at all on which to base it. As long as readers know they’re reading fiction, fine. If they don’t, that’s an entirely different kettle of fish.

By: Marc Aronson

Marc Aronson — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:14:35 +0000

fair enough — what I am saying (based on discussions with my not-so-elderly grad students) is that some loved hist fict when they were 8-11, books that were not all that accurate about, say, likely roles for girls, but which gave them a sense of time and place. I am treating those books as Nutella — easy, fun, light, but not a full meal. I am not saying that more accurate books are necessarily less appealing (we all loved An American Plague, for example, and were less taken with Fever, 1793). But I am defining a place for those Nutella books.

By: Nancy Feresten

Nancy Feresten — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:10:52 +0000

I agree with Marc that reading broadly provides the best education, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the Nutella analogy. Marc, are you suggesting that literature (fiction or nonfiction) that provides a more accurate view of the world is somehow inherently less entertaining than anachronistic historical fiction? I don’t think that’s true, at least not for every kid or for every book or group of books. One kid’s cauliflower may be another kid’s candy.