Re: recent thread on Catherine, Called Birdy

["Jane T. Hohn" <jhohn@PEN.K12.VA.US>]

Dear LM_NETters,

        Reading the recent postings re: _Catherine, Called
Birdy_, by Karen Cushman, brings to mind a recent article in
_Teacher Magazine_, April 1998 issue, entitled "Rewriting
History," by Anne Scott MacLeod.  She is a professor at the
University of Maryland and has written _American Childhood:
Essays on Children's Literature of the 19th and 20th
Centuries."  This article originially appeared in _The Horn
Book Magazine_ with the title, "Writing Backward: Modern Models
in Historical Fiction," January/February 1998.

        She discusses the current trend to write historical
fiction, although thoroughly researched, "through a different
lens;" (p. 36) i.e., events of a historical time filtered through our
20/20 hindsight and late-20th-century-raised consciences.  She
specifically mentions _My Brother Sam is Dead_ (James and
Christopher Collier), _Hang for Treason_ (R. N. Peck), _Sarah,
Plain and Tall_ (Patricia MacLachlan), _The True Confessions of
Charlotte Doyle_ (Avi), _A Break with Charity_ (Ann Rinaldi),
_Hew Against the Grain_ (B.S. Cummings), and _Catherine, Called
Birdy_.

        "It isn't that contemporary writers of historical
fiction do not research the topics and the times they have
chosen.  They do, and they often include information about those
facts and about the sources they have used.  Yet many
narratives play to modern sensibilities.  Their protagonists
experience their own societies as though they were
time-travelers, noting racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and
outmoded beliefs as outsiders, not as people of and in their
cultures.  So Birdy, though she approaches her first experience
with Jews with all the outlandish prejudices of her society,
overcomes them instantly.  So Sarah insists on wearing overalls
when it suits her, and her future husband accepts not only
this, but all her nonconformities, without question let alone
objection.  A ship crew's acquiescence to a 13-year-old girl's
decision to join them as a working sailer-in 1832- hardly needs
comment."  (p. 37))

        Ms. Macleod includes discussions of _Johnny Tremaine_
(Esther Forbes), _A Son of the Middle Border_ (Hamlin Garland),
_Anna Karenina_ (Tolstoy), _Little Women_ (L.M. Alcott) as
being more accurately written in tune with the times addressed.

        "... people of the past were not just us in odd
clothing.  They were people who saw the world differently;
approached human relationships differently; people for whom
night and day, heat and cold, seasons, and work and play had
meanings lost to an industrialized world.  Even if human nature
is much the same over time, human experience, perhaps especially
everyday experience, is not.  To wash these differences out of
historical fictions is not only a denial of historical truth
but also a failure of imagination and understanding that is as
important to the present as to the past."

        I throw this out as food for thought, not an indictment
of those titles, nor to start a "war" on LM_NET.  I urge you to
find the article and read it in its entirety, and to share it
with your teachers.

        Please do not ask me for copies of the article, as
_Teacher Magazine_ is a large publication and does not lend
itself to photocopying on normal-size paper.  If you have
access to _The Horn Book Magazine_ (I do not), its size is
probably more conducive to sharing.

--
Jane Trump Hohn, LMS            "I must say, television is very
Nottoway High School            educational.  The minute someone turns
PO Box 45   Rt. 460 East        it on, I go to the library and find a
Nottoway VA  23955              good book."  Groucho Marx
Ph:(804) 292-5373               "Stupidity deserves more careful
FAX:(804) 292-3021              study, because it is a major factor
e-mail: jhohn@pen.k12.va.us     in human history."  Thomas Sowell

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