Historical Books for Kids

frapoblue said:

Can anybody recommend books where the characters speak in a diction where kids could understand what they are saying? Like historical novels set in medieval/elizabethan/renaissance and the people talk like they're from the present but the setting is still that of their respective time lines.

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What age group?

*This is a pet peeve of mine. Historical characters, speaking in a modern diction.

... "The Witch of Blackbird Pond," by Elizabeth Speare is a good historical novel set in the 1600's. I enjoyed it a lot and the dialect wasn't too overbearing as I recall.

frapoblue said:

Lol are books like these bad because of that?

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Not bad, heck, Simon Scarrow and Anthony Riches hit the bestseller lists with that style of writing. My personal taste prefers Rosemary Sutcliff's style [she herself imitated Kipling], it feels more 'classical' to me. I just don't get a feeling of the classical period from Scarrow and Riches.

Er...

according to editors and agents what the writer of historical fiction should do when writing dialogue is use good plain English, not modern idioms.

I don't think historical dialogue needs to be "hard to read," but the language should give a flavor of the time period. Modern idioms tend to kick me out of the story.
My favorite historical writer for kids for the time period you talked about is Karen Cushman. She has several about the middle ages, and her most recent is set in Elizabethan London.

austen said:

I don't think historical dialogue needs to be "hard to read," but the language should give a flavor of the time period. Modern idioms tend to kick me out of the story.
My favorite historical writer for kids for the time period you talked about is Karen Cushman. She has several about the middle ages, and her most recent is set in Elizabethan London.

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Anything by Celia Rees or Mary Hooper. A number of children's history writers blog at http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/ - recent books are listed there.

frapoblue said:

Can anybody recommend books where the characters speak in a diction where kids could understand what they are saying? Like historical novels set in medieval/elizabethan/renaissance and the people talk like they're from the present but the setting is still that of their respective time lines.

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Don't sell teens short. They have no problem with language that fits the era. My medieval novel has been on high school reading lists for 5 years and continues to be chosen and read by students every year. If they had a problem with the language they'd have stopped reading it long ago.

Carolyn Meyer wrote books about the young Tudor Queens which were EXCELLENt and I would highly recommend them. There are Mary, Bloody Mary; Doomed Queen Anne; Patience Princess Katherine; and Beware Princess Elizabeth.

Great books that kind of changed my life. They were what got me really into history, and now I have decided to make that my career as I am majoring in history in college.

Ken said:

... "The Witch of Blackbird Pond," by Elizabeth Speare is a good historical novel set in the 1600's. I enjoyed it a lot and the dialect wasn't too overbearing as I recall.

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Also The Bronze Bow by the same author.

And Rosemary Suttclif does great historical fiction for younger readers.