History through Fiction

I've just finished reading a children's book that has history in it. The author, Annie Barrows, recalls that as a child she didn't much like books that had a sort of hidden educational purpose, and in an author's postscript says:

... It is with some embarrassment that I find that I have written a book that has some history in it. I would be a good deal more embarrassed if it were a book about history, but it's not, I promise. It's about some kids who live in this very od house and, well... you can read it yourself. But the story also contains some hunks of history, and though I have absolutely no intention of being educational I have to confess almost all of them are true.

I found this particularly interesting because I have written some children's books of which similar things could be said. They all have hunks of history in them, and most of them are true. I can't use the disclaimer about no intention of being educational, because part of my intention was to give children a feel for an earlier time in a fictional setting. I suppose that is something that could be said of most historical novels.

Magic in the Mix by Annie Barrows
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A rather moving story of children who are caught up in time travel, and learn about their own family history and that of their country as a result. I class it as fantasy rather than science fiction because in the book the time travel is ascribed to magic rather than to technology.

Miri and Molly Gill are sisters (as a result of an earlier time-travelling adventure) with two older twin brothers and two younger twin sisters. The house they live in seems to be built on a thin place in time, where events of different times come close to each other, and sometimes this allows the inhabitants to cross from one time to another.

Miri and Molly are initially the only members of the family who are aware of this, and believe that they have been allowed to travel in time to put things right. Presumably they discovered this accidentally in an earlier book in the series, but in this book, while they cannot travel at will to any time they choose, they can with some thought, and some trial and error, manage to do it sometimes.

In this book they travel to the twentieth century, and learn something of Molly's family history, and travel to the nineteenth century and learn something about the American Civil War, and experience some of its dangers.

One of the reasons that I found this book particular interesting is that I finished writing one about six months ago that similarly included hunks of history that happened to be true, and instances of time travel, in a children's novel called Cross Purposes. Both stories are therefore a cross between historical novel and fantasy. The difference is that whereas in Annie Barrows's story the fantasy element is mainly confined to the time travelling itself, mine extends to folklore mythology and mythical creatures.  

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