You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Historical fiction is crucial to “helping children to piece themselves together,” an audience at The Bookseller Children’s Conference heard on 26th September, with a panel of authors explaining the importance of “injecting joy” and “giving characters agency.”
In a talk entitled “Decolonising Historical Fiction”, chaired by author and lecturer Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, whose City of Stolen Magic will be published by Puffin in June 2023, author Sita Brahmachari said: “I think that one of the reasons that young people from migrant refugee backgrounds feel outside reading is because they are actually, because the links have not been made for them back to their history.”
The Artichoke Hearts (Macmillan Children’s Books) author said historical children’s fiction grappling with “what it is like for children to not know where they come from” was therefore fundamental to “helping children to piece themselves together.”
Joanna Brown, author of The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries (Farshore), and Sufiya Ahmed, author of Noor Inayat Khan (Scholastic), agreed historical stories about “people tracking down pieces of themselves” helped to spark curiosity in readers about their own stories, and that it was important to put characters “in the driving seat of the story”.
“Giving characters agency to discover their stories is an invitation to readers to do the same, [to] begin to question their own history. And it’s about making sense of your own present moment,” Ahmed said.
“It very actively invites them into this space and tells them they can begin to question things. That there might be things missing, others stories they can bring, find or put together.
“Because when history is taught in schools it can feel distant, [but these stories show that] it’s about people, and human stories. It may sound obvious but getting children to understand that actually, when they’re learning history, these are people just like us. It’s a time-travel exercise.”
The panel continued that while it was important to truthfully depict the challenges of navigating experiences of empire and colonisation, “injecting joy” was vital, as well as capturing a spirit of adventure and discovery in characters uncovering clues about their histories and identities.