Once Upon a Time . . . . Telling Children Biographical History

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ONCE UPON A TIME .... TELLING CHILDREN BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY As many philosophers of history are quick to point out, there is a good measure of subjectivity involved in recapitulating history, no matter how objective the writer may try to.be; historians, in fact, must shape amorphous data into literary narratives. If historians are storytellers, the mixture of fact and fabrication is even more integral in historical literature. Historical drama, novels, and biographies and autobiographies often serve as barometers for gauging the attitudes and values of the era in which they are produced as well as the historical one with which they deal. In this essay I want to focus on a particular subset of historical literature, biographies written for children. What especially interests me about biographies for children is the kinds of narratives produced from the historical material: they are, as a rule, more fantastic than realistic. As with other literature based on actual people and events, there are certain constraints in writing any kind of historical story for children. Major rewriting is obviously not permissible: Jefferson is a Virginian; the North won the Civil War. There is, however, a less evident consideration regarding readers' historical expectations: the prevailing opinion, which sometimes amounts to historical myth rather than fact, must be adhered to if the work is to appeal to a popular audience. It might be argued that this constraint does not pertain when the readers are children, who have not as yet fully assimilated the prevailing beliefs about even well-known historical figures and events. As Penelope Lively points out, the author who writes for children has the potential to develop historical consciousness among his or her readers. Clearly, however, history for children must meet the historical expectations of the adults -- educators, parents, librarians — who have a hand in determining which books children read. Thus we begin to see the way subjectivity enters into the presentation of historical fact. In her excellent survey of the American history texts used in public schools over the last two centuries, Frances FitzGerald chronicles the shifts in interpretive stances taken by authors of purportedly objective textbooks, stances that reflect the social attitudes and concerns of the day. They range from an emphasis on historical personages to attention to social groups to today's case studies, or "discovery" texts, that offer no definitive interpretation but ask the reader to act as historian and draw conclusions from primary and secondary evidence. Even the recorded facts have changed: Columbus has been superseded by such social reformers as Jacob Riis and William Lloyd Garrison, and once-heralded military generals have faded away as Black Americans, for example, emerge in the newer texts of the American heritage. If history textbooks are shaped according to prevailing historical interests, we can surely expect the same influences in fictionalized biographies and historical fiction for children, genres that by definition provide the opportunity for writing of a more literary nature, i.e., they are structured around character and personal conflict, not the chronology of public events. According to a survey by Judith Hoberman, American historical stories for children do follow a course dictated by public opinion. She notes, for example, the change from jingoistic biographies in the 1950' s to works in the I960' s that focus on women, minorities, and walks of life long overlooked. Hoberman also mentions the impetus to publish anything "historical" in the seventies, for history is as marketable a product in children's book publication now as it is on television and at the movies. Despite the fact that previously neglected persons and subjects have recently made their ways into historical literature for children, the change in the approach authors take toward history has not been revolutionary. It is true that, in addition to the new breadth of subject matter, recent biographies frequently treat historical lives more objectively in that dialogue is often authentic (and sometimes documented) . These works characteristically narrate a life story in just as pointed a fashion as earlier eulogistic tales of, say, the Founding Fathers of America or Britain; thus the longstanding tradition of freely interpreting history continues. Only the heroes and villains have been changed — the existence of distinctly good and distinctly evil...

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