Breathing Life into Difficult Histories and Engaging Children toward Ethical Citizenship through Fiction

Are you responsible for children’s books or history and educational outreach in your library? Meet two new children’s book authors who went from years of working in elementary and university school libraries teaching students of all ages, to writing a novel inspired by the stories their grandmother told them about her internment as a Canadian of Japanese ancestry. They’ll tell you why a children’s fictional story was the only way to tell this very personal history. Drawing on their own experiences in the classroom, as well as their teaching philosophies that engage James Baldwin’s ideas on education for black children and Martha Nussbaum’s ideas on literature for democracy, they’ll discuss why fiction is especially important for exposing children to difference and to difficult histories.

While the authors wrote their book as a tribute to their grandmother and the larger Japanese community and as a way to keep alive the stories she’d told them over the years, they found working with fiction drew out an important tension: to present difficult histories in ways that allowed for gentler, empathetic connections. Such fiction, they hope, will urge young readers to care about the injustices of the past as well those in the present, transforming readers from passively browsing information to actively caring for the world and making present and future change. Engaging with audience members about their own experiences and best practices for using fiction to bring history to life, this LearningLab will energize the argument for why, in a time when the humanities are increasingly under threat, young people need literature in their lives more than ever.