Listen My Children...

I’ve visited the home of only one author, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but it wasn’t on purpose.

I didn’t go there on a pilgrimage for Longfellow.  I went there to do research on George and Martha Washington.  The National Park Service operates the Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters, a magnificent house in Cambridge, MA that has been home to both families.

Just down the block from Harvard University, General George Washington used the house as his headquarters during the siege of Boston in the early days of the American Revolution.  He arrived there not long after the “midnight ride of Paul Revere” and skirmishes in Lexington and Concord. 

Many years later, Longfellow, moved into the historic house that had once been Washington’s war headquarters and home.  About 85 years after the first shots echoed in Massachusetts that began the Revolution, Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” with the familiar opening line, “Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere” and the equally famous line later “one if by land, two if by sea.”

The beautiful historic Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters in Cambridge, MA. 

These tiles surround the fireplace in the master bedroom of the house.  George and Martha Washington would have warmed themselves here.   

I can imagine General Washington climbing up these stairs after a long day of war plans.

Longfellow singlehandedly made Paul Revere famous to every school child in America.  But there are many historical inaccuracies in Longfellow’s poem.  Probably the biggest one is that the poem gives Revere alone all the credit for the warning ride.  But in fact, he was one of three riders that night.  Longfellow ignores the equally historic rides of William Dawes and Samuel Prescott.  Revere did not make it all the way to Concord because the British stopped him for interrogation.  Prescott made it all the way to Concord-but didn’t make the cut in Longfellow’s poem.

This poem is a good example of the power of the written word.  Longfellow was less concerned with historic accuracy than he was with creating an American hero on the eve of the Civil War.  The problem is that the general public believes Longfellow’s version is an accurate retelling of history.  It isn’t. 

Link to the Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters

Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To learn more about the myths of Longfellow's poem

Carla Killough McClafferty

Carla's website

Writing Authentic Women's History--Getting Inside Your Character's Skin

On Monday, Mary Ann kicked off our series of posts in honor of Women's History Month. The logo you see at left is from the Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month site, which will feature posts from 31 different children's authors and bloggers discussing the topic of women's history in books for children and teens. Today's post there by Elizabeth Bird of School Library Journal's Fuse#8 blog highlights several great children's books about uncelebrated women of history.

Today also happens to be World Read Aloud Day. When you're finished reading this post, head on over to the official World Read Aloud website to learn more.

Now, back to the subject of Women's History: Like Mary Ann, I love reading well-written historical fiction featuring female protagonists. It's the next best thing to time travel! However, I despise books where female protagonists are not portrayed authentically. One of my specific "pet peeves" is the absence of church or prayer in novels set in times and places where daily life revolved around religious practices. Historical novelist Linda Proud expressed similar feelings on her blog:

"I’ve just read a book set in the 13th century where neither the feisty heroine . . . nor her lover nor her horrible husband nor any other character ever goes to church. Never a priest wanders into the story, never a bell rings, never a new cathedral appears on the skyline. Don’t get me wrong – it was exceptionally-well written and a gripping read. It was just that something was missing, . . . ."

As an author, though, I know it can be tricky to incorporate religious practices without boring our readers, especially when those readers are children or teens. My current work-in-progress is a young-adult novel set in 18th-century Milan and inspired by two real-life sisters. More is known about the elder sister, Maria, a child prodigy who could speak seven languages by her teen years and who became famous as a female mathematician. I originally considered making her the novel's main character. But Maria was a devoutly religious girl who spent her teen years trying to convince her father to let her become a nun. I decided it would be too challenging (for me, at least) to hook today's average teen reader with such a main character.

Milan's Duomo (cathedral) still under construction, circa 1745

So instead, I'm writing from the younger sister's point of view. Teresa was a child prodigy herself, known for her talents as a singer and harpsichordist, and later as a composer. She clashed with her father when he wouldn't allow her to marry a poor suitor--a dilemma more likely to appeal to today's teens.

Despite wanting modern readers to empathize with Teresa, however, I'm not going to simply transplant a contemporary character into a historical setting. So I need to research and understand what life was like for girls like Teresa and Maria, who were born into 18th-century Milan's upper class. I've learned that, although they were surrounded by luxury, their lives were extremely limited. And that, despite their many accomplishments, the sisters had only two socially-acceptable options when they "came of age": an arranged marriage or life in a convent. The choice wasn't even theirs, but their father's. I think it's important for girls of today to read stories that realistically portray those times. Otherwise, how can they truly appreciate the challenges women had to overcome to get to where we are now?     

So how do we get inside the skin of a historical character who lived and died long before we were born? I found an article by Juliet Waldron called "Day in the Life Method of Writing Historical Novels" that contains tips and exercises to help do just that. I've adapted an exercise from Waldron's article into the following Writing Workout to make it appropriate whether you're writing about historical or contemporary characters. I hope you'll give the Workout a try, then come back and let me know what you learned.

Meanwhile, if you're writing historical fiction, here are two additional articles you may find helpful:

• "Writing Historical Fiction" at HistoricalNovels.info, a site listing over 5000 historical novels by time and place. The site includes a section for young-adult historicals.
• "Seven Rules for Writing Historical Fiction" by novelist Elizabeth Crook.

Writing Workout: Getting Inside Your Character's Skin

1. Imagine your character waking up in the morning. What awakens her? An alarm clock, sunlight, household sounds?
2. What is she sleeping on? A bed, a couch, the floor? What is the bed made of? How big is it? What are the covers like? Is she sleeping alone or sharing the bed?
3. When she opens her eyes, what is the first thing she sees? Is the room furnished? With what?
4. What is the first thing she smells? Are they welcome cooking smells or less pleasant aromas?
5. What is she wearing, if anything? How does the fabric feel against her skin?
6. When she gets up, what is the first thing she does?

You may never use the answers to these questions in your story, but pondering them should help you better imagine your character's life, and that will come across in your writing. For additional questions to consider, see Juliet Waldron's article, "Day in the Life Method of Writing Historical Novels."  

Happy Writing!
Carmela

What if Laura Ingalls Hung Out at the Mall?

      Hooray!  It's Women's History Month! I love historical fiction. I write historical fiction. These two facts are something of a miracle, considering that I grew up disliking historical fiction.
     OK, let's back up a little bit here. As I have said in (way too many) other posts, I am a compulsive
reader.  I have always loved history, although not the kind that in my social studies books. According to those texts, the only important women in American history were Molly Pitcher (who may not have been a real person), Betsy Ross and Dolly Madison. Their contributions to history were (maybe) bringing water to soldiers, sewing a flag, and rescuing George Washington's portrait in the burning of the White House during the War of 1812.
    There had to be some other women who were famous for somewhat less domestic feats. Lots of us of "a certain age" fell in love with biography reading those Childhood of Famous Americans books, which I just discovered are still being published. Ah ha! Here were the female role models I was looking for; astronomer Maria Mitchell, Mary Lyons who founded Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female American physician, Annie Oakley, Olympian Babe Didrickson, choreographer Martha Graham. My all time favorites are still Clara Barton and Amelia Earhart. These women broke the rules, stood up to society, danced their own dance, went where no woman had ever gone before (sorry Star Trek fans.)
    But what does all this have to do with historical fiction?  A lot.  When I was in elementary school, female characters in historical novels were far and few between. Granted, the very nature of society before the mid-20th century relegated women to the most passive of roles in both life and fiction.
     Fictional boys tamed wild animals, survived in the wilderness, rode the Pony Express. Girls sewed samplers, looked after siblings and were pretty much under domestic house arrest. Not only that, but girls were rarely the main characters.  Finding a female character who didn't spend the whole story dipping candles and churning butter was a true treasure.  I still own The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (autographed, too!). The main character, Ann, appealed to me because she missed her old home when her family moved to the Pennsylvania frontier.  My family moved a lot, too. Also, Ann was the first character I encountered who kept a diary! The minute I returned Ann's story to my third grade "class library shelf," I was off to Woolworth's to buy my first diary. (A side note here; not only is The Cabin Faced West still in print, it's also an e-book! Not to shabby for a book published in 1958.)
     There was Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink, who roughhoused with her brothers, and played pranks on her sissy girl cousins. In one memorable episode, she wins a logrolling contest. Caddie was my kind of girl!
     Like every other girl I knew I worked my way through Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series.  I learned a lot about hog-skinning, sewing samplers (again!) and making molasses candy. OK. Fine. Laura was a tough minded girl who frequently got in trouble for her "boyish" ways. As far as I could tell, the only "boyish" thing about Laura was her determination to what she wanted and not always as she was told. The series seemed awfully predictable to me; Mary, the good sister, Laura, the "naughty one", stern Ma, fun-loving Pa (who I never once imagined to look like Michael Landon) and lots of bad crops, insect plagues and unfortunate weather.)
     I had just about given up on the Ingalls when I came at last to The Long Winter. At long last, Laura's  strong mind and sturdy body took front and center as she and her father kept the family alive during an endless winter of blizzards in the Dakota Territory. I was right there when Laura and Pa twisted straw "sticks" to burn when the fuel ran out; when scraped together a family Christmas celebration out of nearly nothing. And I really was there when Laura just loses it after weeks and weeks of being trapped in the house with her family.
   Things seemed to be looking up on the historical fictional heroine front. For awhile.
   There were still gutsy girls aplenty, ploughing the prairie, disguising as boys to join the Army, surviving every kind of disease, plague and catastrophe imaginable.  But slowly, these girls did not so much seem to be girls of their own time, but rather 20th century girls dressed in quaint clothes.
     I am not going to "name names" here. Many of these books are hugely popular, award-winning books written by authors far better known than I. However, it chaps my hide to read a book that supposedly takes place in the Middle Ages...and the main character not only knows how to read and write (something very few people of either sex could do), but talks to her parents in a manner of a sitcom teen. Or educated women in the American wilderness, don men's clothing and work along side them. I know that women did work in the fields (although they wore dresses), but these women were considered to be lower class, because the family couldn't afford field hands. They were pitied rather than admired for their ability to pull a plough.
    This "modernization" of historical fiction is one of my pet peeves.  In fact, I wrote my master's thesis on the subject. I've had many a debate with classroom teachers over the validity of these very popular "historical" books that are anachronistic in spirit.  Teachers tell me they love these books because they make history "accessible" to their students. I contend that these books are not history at all.  What students are learning is that for thousands of years people have always thought and believed in the manner of 20th century middle class Americans. Not true! (Stop me before I start ranting.)
     Perhaps the tide is turning again.  Here are some of my favorite books that I believe to be true to the time of which they were written; true in detail, speech and most importantly, societal attitudes. (And yes, sometimes those attitudes are not political correct, but historically accurate nevertheless.)
    The best book I have read in the last five years is Ruta Septys' Between Shades of Gray. I cannot even begin to describe it other than to say that it pulls no punches, and that I never once felt that I was anywhere other than WWII Russia.
     Here are some other gutsy girls whose authors felt that telling the truth was more important than dumbing down history for the sake of accessibility: Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly Giff, Prairie Songs by Pam Conrad, Anya's War by Andrea Alban, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, One Crazy Summer by Rita Garcia-Williams, Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher, What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, Lyddie by Katherine Patterson, Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, Francie by Karen English, So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins, My Louisiana Sky by Kimberly Willis Holt,
     I hope you will send us your favorite historical fiction females.  You know me. I'm always looking for that next great book!
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman