Our understanding of the past keeps changing—and so should kids’ books

I was cleaning up around the house the other day when I came across John Brewer’s review of Boyd Hilton’s A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1845 (Oxford University, 2008) in the New York Review of Books. The book, which examines how Britain regained its world prominence after losing its American colonies, sounds fascinating, but what really caught my interest was the news that Hilton’s work is part of a brand-new “New Oxford History of England” series—one that is replacing the previous series published between 1934 and 1965. The English are giving their national history a new shape.

We occasionally do the same thing in our country. I worked at Harper & Row in the 1980s. Right after a senior editor retired, we were allowed to select from among the books he left behind. I was thrilled to cart home as many volumes of the “New American Nation” series as I could carry. Remember those hardcovers with the distinctive blue jackets and white-and-red trim? I still have them on one of my bookshelves, alongside “Making of America,” another series that changed our understanding of our nation’s past.

What do these and more recent groundbreaking history series tell us? I suspect that adult readers are looking for a definitive explanation of a specific historic period, interesting facts and information about people they don’t know, and a sense of something fresh and captivating in the author’s approach. See the balance? These series aim for an authority that’s contemporary. They strive to set a standard, establish a canon, define how a period of history can or should be seen. Yet, precisely because the series are revised every generation, they insist that our view of the past can and must change.

Now, let’s see how history books for younger readers stack up against their adult counterparts. Authors, editors, and reviewers of children’s and young adult books often feel uncomfortable with changing historical views. And when writers of these books challenge or deviate from the long-accepted view of things, they feel compelled to include a lengthy note defending their thinking. It’s as if we want history to stand still—for there to be one clear view that we can all acknowledge and accept.

Sometimes I think this is a hangover from last century’s Culture Wars, with their sometimes vicious squabbles over political or academic correctness. (For a prime example, see “The great Greek race odyssey,” the cover story in the Times Literary Supplement’s July 16 issue [the-tls.co.uk/tls/reviews/other_categories/article758153.ece].) Reviewers—and that includes librarians, teachers, and parents—are so afraid that some ideological toe will be stubbed that they steer readers away from any title that seems to present an unfamiliar point of view.

Maybe our books for young people would still fail to recognize the changing perspective of history even if the Culture Wars had never happened. Perhaps today’s books reflect how most of us view authority. We perceive the authors of adult series as experts; so they have the freedom to challenge or modify former views. But in the kids’ book world, reviewers distrust an author’s authority and don’t want to be fooled. Or is it that reviewers are protecting kids—fearing they will be confused by new ways of thinking when they haven’t even learned the old ones?

Whatever the motivation, kids—especially high school students—lose out. We create books for them that make history seem static—while the highly respected publishers of adult series are showing their readers that our view of the past is constantly changing. To gain knowledge, we constantly need to review what we thought we understood. If we began with that assumption, then we would eagerly welcome new and fresh perspectives. We’d encourage authors, publishers, and readers to enjoy exploring the past—instead of merely reciting it.