The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People

Dry history lessons become a thing of the past when historical fiction enters the curriculum. A number of recent young adult titles put faces on eras and events in the United States from the 19th and 20th centuries. Featuring young people coming of age against a backdrop of wars, adventure, and social change, these compelling stories remind us that history was created by real people doing ordinary and extraordinary things in places and times close to home.

Two boys, indentured servants in 1839 rural Massachusetts, struggle to please their master George Lyman in M. P. Barker’s A Difficult Boy (Holiday House, 2008). Daniel, 16 and orphaned, is despised for being Irish and called “Paddy” by everyone except Ethan, who, at 9, is newly bound out to pay back his father’s debts. Daniel brushes off Ethan’s initial attempts at friendship, but is eventually won over as the boys try to protect each other from the cruel beatings meted out by “upstanding citizen” Lyman. When they discover Lyman has been altering his accounts and cheating Daniel out of his inheritance, the tables are quickly turned in a satisfying conclusion. Full of rich characters and dotted with moments of warmth and humor, A Difficult Boy portrays true friendship in a time when child labor and harsh prejudice against the Irish were the norm.

“The first impression I got of Georgia was the heat…It was a living, crawling thing, set out to smother you.” In 1851, CeCe McGill, a self-centered 13-year-old, visits southern plantations with her Uncle Alex, a physician famous for painting birds, in Ann Rinaldi’s The Ever-After Bird (Harcourt, 2007). An abolitionist, Alex also visits the slaves, secretly directing them to the Underground Railroad. CeCe competes for Alex’s attention with Earline, a free black student posing as his slave on the journey. The young women witness the horrors of slavery and face life-threatening danger in this colorful, fast-paced story of courage against injustice.

Based on the true story of his own great-grandfather, Joseph Bruchac’s March Toward the Thunder (Dial, 2008) portrays Louis Nolette, 15, a Canadian Abenaki Indian who enlists with the Fighting 69th Irish Brigade to fight for the Union in the Civil War. Packed with vivid details of military life, from scratchy uniforms to amputated limbs, the story follows Louis and his close-knit Brigade from battle to battle in the Virginia Campaign of 1864. His encounters with important people including Clara Barton, Ulysses S. Grant, and even Abe Lincoln are woven together with facts about Native American culture in a readable account full of interesting characters.

“I thought Clarence Darrow/would look like the devil himself, complete/with a tail and horns and pitchfork./Well./Clarence Darrow does not look like/the devil himself./He looks more like a well-weathered farmer/or like someone’s eccentric grandfather.” Jen Bryant’s free verse Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial (Knopf, 2008) offers a refreshingly humorous and humble take on the famous “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee. Point of view shifts among several townspeople, both adults and children, who remark on the circuslike atmosphere that erupts in the sleepy village, monkeys festooned everywhere. Lawyer Darrow and opponent William Jennings Bryan, remarkably human, charm the locals, who ponder whether belief in evolution and God really contradict each other, in a book that will provoke discussion in science, history, and English classes.

Tommy Duncan, 13, roots for his beloved hometown Brooklyn Dodgers and worries about his mother, just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, in David A. Adler’s Don’t Talk to Me About the War (Viking, 2008). While Tommy is indifferent to 1940 world events, his friend (and crush) Beth is devoted to reading the newspapers daily. Their Jewish friend Sarah, who recently emigrated from Germany, talks of the Nazis and missing family members still in Europe. As Tommy must take on more responsibility at home, he grapples with encroaching war and international conflict in a warm, simple, yet evocative story of an isolationist era when radio and baseball reigned.

A year later, halfway across the country, Ruby Jacinski, 15, quit school to work in a meatpacking plant to support her sister and mother, the only job open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago’s Yards, in Christine Fletcher’s Ten Cents a Dance (Bloomsbury, 2008). When young mobster Paulie Suelze meets her, he sets her up to become a taxi dancer. “No joke. A guy I know runs a dance academy. He’s always on the lookout for girls to teach fellows the newest steps. You…the way you dance, the way you look…yeah, you’d do good.” Ruby jumps at the chance, lies to her mother, and rakes in the dough, reveling in the glamour. She becomes adept at working her customers, exchanging dances and kisses for dinner dates, clothing, and cash. The story takes a dark, dangerous turn when Ruby finds herself entangled beyond extraction with Paulie, her innocence gone. Ten Cents a Dance is a fast-paced, complex story set in Chicago’s jazz clubs and working class neighborhoods, full of gritty characters dealing with social and racial prejudice in a time of war.

Skies Over Sweetwater by Julia Moberg (Keene, 2008) tells the story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Byrd Thompson, 18, leaves Iowa farm life and travels to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, to learn to fly “the Army way.” The WASP flew military planes in the United States, freeing up male pilots for the war effort overseas. Byrd joins young women pilots from all over the country, a spunky and savvy group with high expectations for themselves and each other. Byrd is dogged by guilt, having left home without saying goodbye to her mother and sister who oppose her flying because Byrd’s pilot father died in a small plane crash. Full of strong, courageous heroines and nail-biting aerial thrills, Skies Over Sweetwater is well researched and exciting, with a touch of romance.

The lines were drawn in Memphis, 1954—lines between black and white, affluence and working class—and those lines were not safely crossed. In Ronald Kidd’s On Beale Street (S & S, 2008), Johnny Ross, 15, dares to sneak out of his white neighborhood to hang out on Beale Street at night, listening to the jazz and blues pouring out of the black music clubs. He meets a young Elvis Presley hanging out there, and stumbles into Sam Phillip’s Sun Records studio where musical history is being made. Johnny takes a part-time job at the studio, pals around with Elvis, whose career is just taking off locally, and also hangs out with an African-American friend, Lamont. Already walking a tightrope in a culture of hostile segregation, Johnny learns accidentally that his own father was black and his life threatens to spiral out of control in a strong story that pulses with the rhythm of the blues.

The theme of overcoming prejudice woven through these stories opens up classroom discussion and response possibilities such as mock trials, battle re-enactments, vintage radio dramas and comedies, and oral histories and offers an opportunity to share a rich variety of folk songs, popular tunes, and early rock and roll music. These courageous young characters will enliven single or interdisciplinary units including history, creative writing, poetry, music, folklore, women’s studies, and race relations. Let your students know that Elvis has entered the building!