Week of November 23rd: Historical and Realistic Fiction

   To start off class this week, our professor read a book to the class called The Relatives Came, which was an example of realistic fiction which is what we focused on in class this week in conjunction with historical fiction. It was a really adorable story about a family who has a large number of relatives come to visit and stay with them, and it was perfect since Thanksgiving is soon.

   After we read that book we started talking about Historical Fiction first. I learned that historical fiction is "broadly defined as a work of fiction set in a time prior to when it was written." You evaluate historical fiction based on whether the writer brings the setting to life, whether the characters behave in a way that is believable given the intended time period, and if the conflicts in the story are plausible. After we discussed that we got into groups and read two books and then analyzed them as historical fiction, and then created a chart. My group read "Oh, What a Thanksgiving," and "Stagecoach Sal." I liked reading the books since, considering they are historical fiction, they gave me background knowledge on things I did not know about before.

   Next we talked about realistic fiction. I learned that realistic fiction is "derived from actual circumstances with a realistic setting and characters who face problems and opportunities that are within range of what is plausible in real life." The criteria for evaluating is basically judging whether or not the characters, settings, and events are plausible. After we talked about realistic fiction, we again broke into groups to analyze a historical fiction book. We read a really intriguing children's book called Ruby May Has Something to Say, and made another chart analyzing it. 

   I loved learning about these two genres, especially historical fiction. I think historical fiction is so fun to read since it is based in actual events. The movie "Titanic" reminds me of what historical fiction is. If the story in that movie was a book I think it would definitely be classified under historical fiction.