Old stories for young readers
Critics may scorn grown-up historical fiction, but children's writers from Rosemary Sutcliff to Kevin Crossley-Holland have brought the past magically alive
Historical fiction for adults ranges in stature from the Booker-winning to the bodice-ripping scholarly rambles or gleeful romps through a past animated, elucidated, or (at worst) knocked together into an unconvincing stage set by the writer's imagination. The label carries its own baggage, however; like "crime", or "fantasy", sticking "historical" before "fiction" might, for some snobbish and deluded readers, require an "only" to complete the description.
It's my feeling that historical fiction for children suffers less from the snootiness sometimes attracted by grown-up writing in the genre, perhaps because the educational cachet outweighs the sense that a "made-up" book is less worthwhile than a collection of primary sources. Certainly the best historical fiction of my childhood has remained with me, frequently prompting me to investigate further, because of a beguiling combination of meticulously-researched period detail good for trivia freaks! and red-blooded characterisation. Also, there's likely to be death, danger and grime under the nails in good kids' historical fiction; and unusually, it appeals across the board to both girls and boys.
For me, the nonpareil of children's historical fiction remains Rosemary Sutcliff, whose books about Bronze Age Britain (Warrior Scarlet, Sun Horse, Moon Horse) and Roman Britain, particularly The Eagle of the Ninth and The Lantern Bearers, were intensely memorable to me as a child and part of the reason I eventually chose to study classics at university. Recently, rereadi! ng Warri or Scarlet, I was amazed all over again by the restrained poetry of Sutcliff's intensely evocative writing the story of Drem, a one-armed boy determined to win the right to wear scarlet as a warrior of his tribe, is infused with a breath of woodsmoke and animal blood that drifts subtly but irresistibly from the page. I hadn't known, as a young reader, that Sutcliff was herself disabled rereading the book in the light of that knowledge, it's less surprising to me that she was able to create so vivid a sense of Drem's frustration at the arm which "trails like a bird's broken wing" as he darts through the forest with his throw-spear.
Another perennial childhood favourite is Henry Treece, whose Viking Saga trilogy, grim, sanguinary and poignant, follows Harald Sigurdson from his first voyage as a boy in a longship under the command of the magnificent Thorkell Fairhair to his last as a seasoned warrior, this time himself the master of the ship. From the sun-fevered romance of The Road to Miklagard the Norse word for present-day Istanbul to the freezing blades of Viking's Dawn and an early transatlantic voyage in Viking's Sunset, the books are characterised by violence, easy death and the close bonds forged between warriors who brave the whim of the wild sea and the hostility of the peoples they meet only to despoil. The terror and glamour of the Berserker fighters who tear off their clothing and run naked and blood-streaming into battle unites the books, which still boast a mythic grandeur in keeping with their subject matter.
Less bloodily, I also loved Cynthia Harnett's Carnegie-winner about 15th-century English wool traders, The Wool-Pack, and The Load of Unicorn, set at the time of Caxton's printing press both feature sympathetic child characters who navigate the bewilde! ring pol itics and restrictions of their respective times in utterly absorbing stories.
Contemporary young readers remain thoroughly spoilt, however Celia Rees and Sally Gardner are two of the biggest hitters currently writing children's historical fiction. Gardner distils the paranoia and excess of the French Revolution magnificently in The Red Necklace and its sequel The Silver Blade her particular appeal for me is the touch of mysticism, never too overblown or unbelievable, which underlines the sense of wonder the reader feels at being skilfully transported into the past (this also marks out her earlier book I, Coriander, set in the Puritan Commonwealth). Rees explores feminism and piracy with hearty and heartfelt panache in Pirates!, set in the 1720s, described by Rees as "the end of the golden age of piracy"; and her two books on Puritan witch-hunting, Witch Child and Sorceress, are instant classics. And Kevin Crossley-Holland rewrites Arthurian legend commandingly in his acclaimed and award-winning Seeing Stone trilogy, and takes one of its most engaging characters on a quest to the Holy Land in Gatty's Tale. Philip Pullman has remarked that "deep scholarship, high imagination, and great gifts of storytelling" went into The Seeing Stone and it's these characteristics, for me, which mark out all the best historical fiction for children, whether it's the yellowed paperbacks I remember from my childhood or the handsomely designed new novels on which I now blow my pocket-money.
Who ar e the authors who transported you into a fascinating past when you were young, and who have I missed of the contemporary giants? And what are the most abstruse bits of historical trivia to have lodged in the teeth of your memory as a result of childhood reading?
Comments