Historical Fiction or Fictionalized History?

     Reading this article enlightened me on how hard it can be for author's to write accurate historical fiction while still engaging and entertaining a reader.  I didn't realize that historical fiction is sometimes looked down upon in the fictional realm of books either. I have always enjoyed historical fiction, so I had no clue that it can be so difficult for kids to engage in and such.  I also really liked how the article talked about how historical fiction does not have to include historical figures. I think this is a really great point.  I tend to enjoy historical books that don't include prominent historical figures, but are about young, seemingly insignificant people who make a difference.  This brings me to the points in the articles about how historical fiction authors tend to write about these "real" people who become so heroic that they don't seem "real" at all anymore.  I think this is also a great point and is actually what I have experienced in a lot of my reading of historical fiction. 

     The quote above stuck out to me a lot in the article.  This really showed me the real challenges of writing good historical fiction.  I would really like to find historical fiction for my students that is a good mixture of heroic characters and historical facts.  We just read My Brother Sam is Dead for our other LLED class and actually ended up talking about the anti-war message and the time in which it was written, another point made in the article.  I thought the book portrayed a great message about the consequences of war, but when we talked about it in class, we discussed how it was written around the time of the Vietnam War.  The book received very negative criticisms in the 1970s because of its message.  I found this article very interesting, and it taught me a lot I wasn't aware of about historical fiction.