Historical Fiction for Children
Lifelong Learning | Registration opens 1/8/2025 9:00 AM EST
The study of history has been minimized in many school programs in the last few decades. The result may lead to a very weak understanding of historical events and past eras of our collective past with consequences we may not yet foresee. Children’s historical fiction is sometimes the mainstay of historical understanding for children. Reading some quality children’s historical fiction provides a window into the way children are coming to understand our past and its ever-evolving portrait of who we were and how the past has shaped who we have become.
We will read four works of American historical fiction, written and published for children. I will announce the texts to the class a few weeks prior to the beginning of the term. This class will be discussion based. The novels under consideration are as follows: Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor, and The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis.
The fun of this class will rest on the variety of the voices in the room and the wealth of reading and life experience that lie behind those voices.
Mary Beth Spore
Mary Beth Spore, Ph.D., has been a faculty member and administrator in at the University for Pittsburgh and Saint Vincent College for over 25 years. She has taught many courses in children’s and young adult literature and criticism as well as writing and speech classes. She loves teaching and learning, and seeks both in the classroom. She is a lover of children, dogs, reading, and storytelling. She is a native of western PA, and received her Ph.D. in English Education from the University of Pittsburgh.