We are so excited to have Susan Claus join us today to share information about Historical Fiction Picture Books!
Susan Claus is a children’s librarian, writer, and illustrator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is happiest outside on slightly rainy days. Susan makes sure to let her inner child out every day to play.
I love picture books that evoke different eras. Whether it’s the author using old-fashioned words and turns of phrase, or the illustrator drawing authentic scenes that give you a visual vocabulary of times past, historical fiction picture books are the closest thing to time travel yet invented.
Strictly speaking, an historical fiction picture book IS…
… set in an era not the author’s own.
… realistic in settings and characters.
… may be inspired by a true event.
An historical fiction picture book is NOT:
… a biography or memoir.
… a straightforward history of a time period.
… folklore.
… a story with magical happenings or beings.
Here are some wonderful books that follow that strict definition.
Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall
Oxcart Man by Donald Hall
The Matchlock Gun by Walter Edmunds
Dahlia by Barbara McClintock
New Shoes by Susan Meyer
All of a Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins
Picnic at Mudsock Meadow by Patricia Polacco
Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
And a few that bend the rules a bit:
Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D.B. Johnson (Henry David Thoreau as a likeable talking bear)
The Boy in the Garden by Allen Say (a young boy falls asleep in a garden and has a magic-filled dream)
When Everybody Wore Hats by William Steig (a delightfully frothy and irreverent memoir)
And two that swing back and forth between present and past:
Before I Was Your Mother by Kathryn Lasky
Kamishibai Man by Allen Say
