Forge (by Laurie Halse Anderson)

Laurie Halse Anderson set the standards very high for herself with Chains, the first installment of the Seeds of America trilogy. In Chains we encountered Isabel, a New York slave at the beginning of the American Revolution, and her personal – desperate – need to be free against the backdrop of a nation’s quest for freedom from a foreign oppressor, the very same setting that also M.T. Anderson used in his majestic Octavian Nothing books, by the way. Chains’ sequel Forge – though not really focusing on Isabel, and definitely not another scientific experiment – is another proof of what a literary giant Laurie Halse Anderson really is in the realm of historical fiction in general, and the YA-universe in particular.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (by M.T. Anderson)

In Bookland, there’s nothing as satisfactory as picking up a book with no prior knowledge or expectations regarding its plot or style, and being completely dazzled by the entire experience once you’re through it. Such was the case with M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1. M.T. Anderson gained some notoriety after publishing (the sadly not readily available on Amazon)  Feed, a YA cyberpunk novel and a National Book Award Finalist, but I’m sure there weren’t too many people who saw this one coming!

Chains (by Laurie Halse Anderson)

Historical fiction for children is a daunting task. As a writer for “children” you obviously want to tell an imaginative story (because children usually love creative and fantastic settings and storylines), but you also want children to get a fairly accurate idea of the time period you’re writing about.  How to accomplish that great fusion of the ‘imaginative’ and the ‘historically accurate’ is something adult writers like E.L. Doctorow have taken a patent out on. Their work has been recognized, rewarded, researched, PhD’d on, and other such academic stuff. Though Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains did win a prize (Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction), the fact that the 2009 Newbery Medal – probably still the most prestigious American children’s award – went to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (btw, an *excellent* read!), seems to prove my point that it’s not just children who often  prefer  ‘fantasy & imagination’ over ‘historical faction’.