Murder and Mayhem under Grey Skies
Joyce Adams Burner, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 11/4/2008
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Consider the history of the British Isles. What leaps to mind? Lists of monarchs with the same names, distinguished by Roman numerals? Primly proper people with stiff upper lips and a penchant for tea? A recent spate of young adult fiction brimming with captivating characters vanquishes the stuffy caricatures and brings British and Irish social and political history to warm, pulsing life with tales of adventure, bravery, and often, brutality.
"What power I have comes from my silence.” Kidnapped by Viking slave traders, Irish princess Melkorka refuses to speak, leading her captors to believe she is an enchantress in Donna Jo Napoli’s Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale (S & S, 2007). Set in the year 900 and based on an Icelandic saga, Hush is rich in tension-building detail. Melkorka endures brutality and danger as she travels to Russia where a Norseman buys her to be his concubine, but she never breaks her self-protecting silence. Themes of revenge and the subjugation of women and children lend themselves to discussion of current events, as well as women’s studies and history.
The English chafe under the rule of their Norman conquerors in 1100, in Michael Cadnum’s The King’s Arrow (Viking, 2008). Young nobleman Simon joins a royal hunting party as game servant to the king’s friend Walter Tirel. When Tirel’s arrow kills King William II, Simon and Tirel flee for their lives with the king’s guardian Marshal Roland in hot pursuit. Was it accident or murder? Based on historical events, Cadnum’s fast-paced story of honor and valor weaves a detailed tapestry of medieval conspiracy.
Regarding her corpulent father Henry VIII, the young Princess Elizabeth observes, “I felt sorry for him, this mighty King, because I sensed he did not know how to love.” Ann Rinaldi’s storytelling shines in The Redheaded Princess (HarperCollins, 2008), as she follows Elizabeth from childhood through teen years until she takes the throne as Elizabeth I in 1558. From political intrigue at court to banishment, beheading, and the Tower of London, Rinaldi reveals the life of English society as observed through Elizabeth’s eyes.
Grippingly macabre from the first page, Mary Hooper’s Newes from the Dead (Roaring Brook, 2008) alternates voices between a young maidservant hanged for infanticide in 1650 Oxford and the stammering medical student attending the dissection of her body who sees her eyelids flutter. As Anne Green gradually emerges from her paralyzed state, she recalls her seduction by her nobleman employer’s grandson, resulting stillbirth in a privy, imprisonment in a filthy crowded jail, and hanging. The conversation of the doctors and students at the dissection divulges details of the history of medicine and interaction among British classes. Based on a true story, Newes from the Dead lends itself to discussions of history, science, and ethics.
Dissecting corpses for medical study also figures in T. K. Welsh’s Resurrection Men (Dutton, 2007), set in 1830s London. Victor, orphaned at 12, is kidnapped and sold to a pair of grave robbers, “resurrection men” who sell fresh bodies to researchers and run a ring of beggar children on the side. In a gruesomely detailed recounting of Victor’s wildly fluctuating fortunes, Welsh creates a bleak portrait of London street life, darkly Dickensian and thoroughly riveting. Offer this one alongside Oliver Twist for lively, if uneasy, discussion.
“Fred Lane, that’s who I dream about, his head blown off right in front of me, and then that poor devil who fell on me, moaning his heart out until he died. Over and over again I see them. I’ll always see them.” Ellen’s brother Jack has returned from the trenches of World War I, missing a leg and screaming in his sleep, in Dennis Hamley’s Without Warning: Ellen’s Story 1914-1918 (Candlewick, 2007). To help support her working class family, Ellen first takes a position as parlor maid for Lord and Lady Faunton, then goes to London to train as a nurse and finally serve in a field hospital in France. Hamley seamlessly weaves Ellen’s story of growing independence into the greater picture of the “War to End All Wars,” including anti-German sentiment, British class prejudices, expanding opportunities for women, and incidents of courage and cowardice in a multi-layered, readable novel.
Siobhan Dowd intertwines ancient and recent history in Bog Child (Random, 2008). Fergus McCann, 18, and his uncle cross the border from Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic to steal peat to sell in 1981, and dig up the body of a girl buried in the bog. The haunting story of the Iron Age child, sacrificed there two thousand years earlier, is artfully worked into Fergus’s own struggles, as he is blackmailed into smuggling packages for the Irish Republican Army and watches his older brother slowly dying in a prison hunger strike. Pitch perfect in dialogue and detail, Bog Child will spark discussions of struggles for independence in Ireland and elsewhere.
Invite these spirited young heroes and heroines to join your classroom discussions and recommended reading lists, and let them rescue Britannica from the dry old encyclopedia!
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