Using Novels to Teach History

Using novels to teach history is an often-overlooked means to hook your youngsters on a love of history while simultaneously teaching about the past.

Launch Pad for Research and Discussion

Novels can be used as a foundation to teach history. There is research that suggests using novels to learn history can grab student interest, offer readers the opportunity to get involved with history at an emotional level, and help students remember the history. Here’s a quote from E. L. Doctorow, a historical novelist, that summarizes it for us, “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

If we explore deeper, University of Texas professor Steven Mintz points out that historical novels “lay bare history’s human side.” He also says that fiction allows us to get into the past’s emotions and take a look at why people did what they did.

That all sounds like a winner, but how do we make it happen? At the easiest level, we can use novels with our children and teens to spark research and conversations about periods and people in history. Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins introduces us to the adventures of Karana, a young Indian girl who lived alone on a Pacific coast island for eighteen years. It’s a powerful story of survival, but it can also be used as a launch pad for research and discussion of the native peoples of California and interaction with Europeans and other peoples in the early 1800s in California.

Literature Guides

Can we go even deeper into using novels to teach history? Many novels have “literature guides” written about them. Elizabeth George Spears’s The Bronze Bow shows the power of forgiveness and redemption. This novel, placed in the time of Jesus, explores Roman occupancy in Israel, the zealots and outlaws, and what the Jewish people believed. Besides its rich story showing Jesus’s impact on a young man who fiercely hated the Romans, it draws a rich tapestry of life in Israel in the first century. So much historical research about what life was like when Jesus walked and taught among us can grow out of this memorable novel.

Published literature guides often include summaries of the novel, historical backgrounds, information about the author, lessons about elements of literature, activities, student assessments and much more.

You can search for “literature guide” or “study guide” or “teacher guide” on Amazon or Teachers Pay Teachers at teacherspayteachers.com. (The materials on Teachers Pay Teachers are written by teachers and used in actual classrooms.) Using a published literature guide is an automatic way to deepen student understanding of historical novels.

Study Guides

Both my book examples above were Newbery winners. Newbery Medals have been given to "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children" for over 100 years. However, wonderful historical novels are out there that didn’t win the Newbery. A visit to your community library will turn up many appropriate novels for young readers to young adult readers. (I would encourage reading the novels ahead of using them with your youngsters—or reading reviews from influencers or reviewers that you trust—because many, especially recently published novels, may contain elements that you don’t like.)

Most historical novels do not have lit guides written about them. What can you do in that case?

My recommendation is to develop a study guide for novels that don’t already have one. I use a format in the historical novels I write and use with students that contains:
     -  “Learning Objections” so I’m clear in my own mind what I want student-readers to know;
     -  “Teaching Hints” where I list additional resources such as maps and nonfiction books, etc., that can be used in instruction;
     -  “Creative Activities” because creativity and fun are always good and because, for example, drawing Egyptian tomb paintings will reinforce learning about them;
     -  “Student Assessments” so that I can know what students learned and whether I need to go over any areas again; and
     -  “Answer Keys” so I’m sure of the answers.

Research shows that using novels to teach history is a lively and effective instructional method that you can use to spark research and discussion, deepen knowledge with the purchase of published literature guides, and create your own study guides.

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Carol Kerney is a teacher and writer. She has written 16 novels that contain direct history instruction as an integrated part of the story. If you want to review her novels further, visit her booth at our upcoming Parenting & Homeschool Convention or go to amazon.com or teacherspayteachers.com, search “Carol Kerney.”