Author Visit!

Next Tuesday night, November 15th, Laurie Halse Anderson will visit the St. Louis County Library in Frontenac on book tour for her new historical novel Forge.

I hope some of you will get out there to see her!  The event starts at 7 p.m., and the county library is across the street from Plaza Frontenac mall.  Puddnhead Books is one of the tour stop sponsors.

Forge is a great Revolutionary War page-turner featuring an escaped child slave named Curzon and scenes from the long winter at Valley Forge.  There's humor, grit, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, a great narrative voice, and many, many cool historical epigraphs that link each chapter to voices from the time period.

Jennifer

Historical Fiction

Historical fiction is by far my favorite genre to read. I know it might seem slow and boring to most, but I love to read a story about characters and their experiences based on real life events. Unfortunately, as an English major, I spend most of my time reading assigned work and novels, so I don't get very much time to read for enjoyment. Reading Countdown gave me a chance to read a genre that I really enjoy, and as a result, it made me think about some of my favorite novels that I had read in the past. This got me thinking, when I graduate in just a few months, I won't be forced to read 12 novels and 50 scholarly every semester. I'll be able to read whatever I want in my spare time. There must be so many more historical fiction books out there for both adults and teens that I've never even heard of!

This got me really excited, so I went online to search for sites that offered booklists for the best historical fiction for teens and I found one that I thought was very interesting. There is an article from the ALAN Review (granted it's from 99, so it's a bit dated) that contains a list of the best historical fiction for YA 'through the decades.' Each list contains books written during and/or about each decade of the 20th century, which reminded me of Countdown. I've pasted the link below so that you guys can check it out if you get the chance or if you are looking for some suggestions for a good piece of YA historical fiction. Enjoy!


http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/spring99/brewbaker.html



-Katie

Historical Fiction and Real-Life Connections

While I was in the middle of reading Countdown, I started to think about my parents. I've heard my parents mention some memories they have of John F. Kennedy from when they were kids in the sixties. Franny got me thinking a lot about what it must have been like to try to understand these huge international political issues from an eleven-year-old's perspective, and then it hit me: my dad was also eleven years old in 1962!

I called my dad and told him about the book, and he sounded really interested (maybe he'll even read it one day!). I told him about Franny and her age and about the historical events she was right in the middle of. He said he remembered hearing a lot about what was going on in Cuba from watching television and hearing other people talk about it frequently. It sounded like my dad was a lot like Franny in that it was something he heard about all the time but was probably unable to grasp the intricacies and implications of the situation.

He did share a pretty cool memory with me, though: my dad said that he and his friends were constantly hearing about fallout shelters, just like Franny was, and they decided to make their own! He said that he and his friends dug a huge hole out in a field near where they lived and covered the opening with sticks, cardboard, and whatever they could find.

I thought it was so interesting to hear my dad's memories from his pre-teen perspective of the same events I was reading about. And how cool is it that they tried to make a shelter?!

Susan Elliott