Past Imperfect by Mary Hoffman

Past Imperfect? Selling children's historical fiction to a modern audience

Roman Nine Muses frieze, Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons

This was the title of a very successful meeting at the Society of Authors in London on 16th March. It was organised by the SoA and Sue Reid of Histeria, a group of writers of historical fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults.

The panel of professionals, ably chaired by Kevin Crossley-Holland, consisted of Sarah Odedina (formerly Children's Publisher at Bloomsbury and Hot Key and now with Pushkin Children's Books); Ruth Logan (ex-Bloomsbury and now Rights Director at Hot Key) and Dawn Finch (Librarian and President of CILIP)

This is my account of the meeting. Sadly, Marketing was not represented, as the result of a last minute cancellation but the experience and skills of this panel were considerable. Kevin, currently the Honorary President of the School Library Association, is a poet, novelist, opera librettist and translator, who has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Book Award with historical fiction for children.

Photo credit: Mjosefsson Creative Commons

In his opening remarks on the importance of history and story, Kevin quoted Hilary Mantel: "To live in the present without engaging with the past is like being a dog or a cat, bobbing along on a sea of egotism and ignorance."

He also read us, complete with cold, W H Auden's Roman Wall Blues, which begins

"Over the heather the wet wind blows
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose"

to remind us of the importance of vesting story in individual people - a theme which was frequently returned to in the course of the evening.

He then asked each panellist for a short overview of whether historical fiction for children is in crisis.

Dawn Finch (DF) began by saying that it was a common belief that it went in and out of fashion in children's publishing but she believed that the kind of child who reads historical fiction is a wider reader anyway. She felt that the teaching of history in schools was focussed on differences whereas fiction took the opposite approach.

Sarah Odedina (SO) was reluctant to consider historical fiction as separate from any other form of great storytelling. She cited Celia Rees's Witch Child, which was successful primarily because of a compelling  central character.

Ruth Logan (RL), who has to sell translation rights, frequently speaks to scouts and has found the popular periods to be the Holocaust, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Slave Trade, the two World Wars, maybe the French Revolution. "But nothing works without a wonderful story."

Kevin Crossley-Holland (K C-H) said we needed to "step into the heads and hearts" of our characters. He wanted to know if we were doing enough ruthlessly to expose children to today's realities. Or were just concentrating on SF and fantasy.

RL: Fantasy is "Future Historical."

DF thought that in times or Recession and Depression readers want SF and nostalgia.

SO believes that Historical Fiction can allow the author to present a mirror to the world and show political realities in an apparently safe and distant past. It has a role in mediating the present through the past.

RL thought it wasn't just a matter of period: there is a market for the mix of history with a magical or fantastic element.

Martin Reed of the Society of Authors asked a question on behalf of a member who could not attend, Ilona Aronovsky. This was about who are the heroes and villains of history, since history is contentious.

K C-H said that recent literature had taken a Marxist view of telling stories "from the bottom up." It began with Bows against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease.

SO thought there was still a problem with telling the stories of certain people and not others. What is "our point of view"?We could do with more experimentation in form.

RL thought it was an exciting time with all kinds of different voices but SO thought there was still a white male bias although it was being challenged. And SO thought the publishing industry was really trying.

DF thought that historians might fear we were diluting history by giving alternative versions but history is not a science. When she grew up everyone "knew" that Tutankhamun was murdered  and that Shakespeare invented Richard the Third's curved spine.

RL says it must open the imagination of the child and SO said it must humanise history.

Rus Madon asked about which historical writing was more accessible for which age range of readers. But SO repeated that historical fiction was no more difficult than any other literature. It all came back to compelling stories.

DF referenced the National Curriculum and said that 7-11 year-olds were studying Greeks, Romans and Egyptians and wanted immediacy and glamour - big themes. By eleven they will have studied the 1930s. And RL talked about the importance of the book's jacket. DF agreed and said it was the whole package - after all "who goes into a restaurant without reading the menu first?"

K C-H asked how much publishing was curriculum driven and SO said she never thinks about that and didn't even know what was on the curriculum! This was widely welcomed.

DF asked the publishers if fiction set in the Victorian period sold well, mentioning that it hadn't been on the curriculum for many years. And RL said they would mention to Sales Reps if the subject was on the curriculum.

Candy Gourlay mentioned cultural appropriation and asked if it meant she should write only about Philipino characters and situations. SO could sympathise with the position when she received submissions where the author hadn't close experience of the group he was writing about.

RL said it was about opening doors.

This was the night that the Carnegie and Greenaway Medal shortlists were announced and K C-H asked when a historical novel was last shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal but was reminded that Tanya Landman's Buffalo Soldier wasx a recent winner.

Catherine Johnson, author of Princess Carabou, Sawbones etc. said the problem wasn't prizes but sales. It's harder to sell "alternative voices" overseas, where publishers often wanted a Downton Abbey or Quality Street view of British history.

Battle of the Somme, Downton Abbey Series 2

RL said we must look at books which transcend the period. Not having an Elizabethan on the cover is a good idea. SO agreed that sales were hard but ALL sales were hard. Far too much is published - fantasy, contemporary and dystopian fiction were all equally hard.

There was a question about when "history" begins - something we have discussed a lot on the History Girls. The usual definition is that  historical fiction must be set at least a generation ago.

SO added that to a ten year old anything that happened twenty years ago is unimaginable.

Lydia Syson asked about the role of school librarians as the greatest champions of historical fiction. DF was the obvious panellist to talk about this and said that no-one read more than a school librarian. She had read forty books this year already. Parents were difficult to persuade to part with £7.99 for a book.

Linda Edwardes-Evans said that unfortunately many teachers did not read themselves and the books they were using with children were not recent. DF gave a shout out to Barrington Stoke's list with a lot of historical fiction in it. Their catalogue would reach teachers. She believed every school needed a "book expert" even if not a librarian.

There was a question about comedy in historical fiction and all the panel agreed we needed more funny books - full stop!

K C-H mentioned we hadn't touched on the influence of TV and series like A Game of Thrones. And RL added films like The Pirates of the Caribbean.

After a brief discussion about poetry, which might be adding another difficult dimension to presenting titles to the Sales teams, K C-H asked us all to nominate favourite recent historical novels.

This followed on from SO's rallying cry that you should publish only the books you felt passionate about.

My choice was Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. Someone chose Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve. Following Ophelia by Sophia Bennett was Catherine Johnson's choice and someone else called out Morris Gleitzman's books and Eve Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.

The panel's choices were Catherine Johnson's own Princess Carabou, Celia Rees's Witch Child and Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon.

Kevin talking to Margaret Pemberton before the panel

Thanks to Celia Rees for swapping posting days with me; Celia will post on 1st April

(Past Imperfect? was the brainchild of Histeria, a group of children’s and YA historical writers - and was a response to the difficulties many writers  find getting their work published now.)

July competition

Give a good answer to this question in the Comments below and win one of five copies of July guest Sue Reid's novel, By My Side.

What place, monument or building most inspires you with a sense of its past?

We're afraid our competitions are open to UK residents only.

Closing date 7th August.

Life and Love during the Occupation, Amsterdam - by Sue Reid

 Our guest for July is Sue Reid, whose work is always triggered by a historical event or character.

Sue Reid has always had a passion for history, and for writing stories about it, but it wasn’t until she had grown up and tried several careers that she  decided to try and get a story published. Her first book, Mill Girl, was published by Scholastic in 2002. Since then she has written a number of short stories and dramas for schools radio,  and  has had several more books published.

First love. Surely we can all remember it - its pain, its heartache, its joy. My book By My Side is about first love, between two teenagers living in Amsterdam. But unlike most of us, these two teenagers had to contend with issues that went far beyond the usual teenage romantic ones - Katrien was a Gentile, and Jan Jewish – and the time and place they lived in was the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands in WW11.

What made me choose such a time and place for a love story? I’m not sure that I can answer that easily. Maybe it’s the stories that choose us, rather than the other way round.

I’d often found myself thinking about the Nazi Occupation, and wondered what it must have been like to live through it – a fate we in Britain were fortunate to escape. And when I thought of the Occupation in Europe, it was always Amsterdam that came to mind.

Photo credit: Massimo Catarinella

I’d visited Amsterdam many years ago, and been bewitched by it – its beauty, its culture and the friendliness of its people. It was in Amsterdam too that I encountered one of the most poignant memorials to Nazi persecution I know – the annexe in the canal house on Prinsengracht, now a museum - a short walk from Herengracht where I was staying - where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. Since I visited it the museum has expanded and recent pictures of the exterior show long queues waiting outside. There was no queue the day I went, and it wasn’t crowded inside, but the atmosphere was so overpowering that I found I couldn’t stay inside it for long. The annexe had a profound effect on me then and I can recall it even now.


Round the corner from the house is the famous life-size bronze statue of Anne Frank, sculpted by Mari Andriessen. It stands in front of the famous Westerkerk, surely one of the city’s most beautiful churches, inside which fittingly the artist Rembrandt is buried. The regular chiming of its tower clock comforted Anne - its familiarity a reminder of another time, a safer time.

Photo credit: P.H. Louw

Other memorials in Amsterdam remind you of the Nazi Occupation – in Jonas Daniel Meijer Square, in front of the Portuguese synagogue the statue of ‘De Dokwerker’ stands framed by trees. It too was cast in bronze by the sculptor Mari Andriessen and unveiled in 1952 to honour all those who took part in the General Strike of February 1941. It was in May 1940 that the Nazi ‘Blitzkrieg’ had overrun the neutral Netherlands and imposed a policy of ‘Nazification’ and anti-Jewish decrees on the country, beginning with the gradual dismissal of Jews from public life. The strike was organized by the Communist party – banned by the Nazis like all other Dutch non-Fascist parties - as a protest against the treatment of the Jews and the forced labour draft that sent young men to work in Germany. There is nothing idealized about the sculpture – it shows a rather portly man, stomach bulging over the waistband of his trousers - and to me is all the more affecting for that. The strike, which began in Amsterdam and spread to other Dutch towns and cities, was the first organized protest against the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in Occupied Europe. Reprisals were harsh, but in spite of this two more strikes were to follow, though resistance after this was mostly conducted covertly, underground. Each year now the town’s officials and members of Holocaust organisations march past the statue, in remembrance of the strike, on its anniversary, 25 February.

Photo credit: P.H. Louw

In the heart of the Jewish Cultural Quarter stands the Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theatre), its façade restored, now a teaching centre, and memorial to the many Jews who were held there, while awaiting deportation.

Memorials like these help keep a city’s past alive - the stories of the people who lived there woven into their bricks and mortar. Stories like Katrien’s and Jan’s – two young people brought together and divided by war. I didn’t know when I visited Amsterdam that I would write about it one day. That Katrien and Jan would walk down the streets I walked down, gaze over the canals I gazed over, wake like me to see Herengracht muffled by winter fog. I begin their story early in 1942, when a chance meeting with a courageous boy who goes to the aid of an elderly man inspires Katrien to begin a diary. Her unfolding friendship with Jan she tries to keep secret – within the pages of her diary - to protect him and their relationship. A diary written now about a long gone time. But I hope there is something of the feeling of that time and place in its pages, of the poignancy of first love experienced under such difficult conditions.


Of course there are many other places where the past is preserved. When I was researching my book I spent hours listening to recordings, reading newspapers and obituaries, diaries and other personal accounts written by people who lived through that time, discovering tales of heroisim like Jaap Penraat’s, who safely marched hundreds of young Jews out of the city at the height of the Occupation – a real-life escape I model my fictional Jan’s on. But there is I think something particularly affecting about walking about a city and suddenly being brought face to face with its past. A monument maybe. Or an old building. The atmosphere in a house. It lingers in the mind, helps us to remember. And it is important that we do. The past inspires us. Teaches us. Warns us. In a year like this, when we remember an earlier world war, when the ugly spectres of extremism, racism, fascism, are rising again, its messages are timely.

Sue's website is: http://www.suereidauthor.com