LAUSR

In 2011, I started researching and writing about biofiction—literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure. My suspicion at that time was that these works would appeal to students, so by 2014, I had taught a number of biographical novels, including Arna Bontemps’s Black Thunder, Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain, Joanna Scott’s Arrogance, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Irvin Yalom’s When Nietzsche Wept, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, and Lance Olsen’s Nietzsche’s Kisses. Student responses were so positive that in the spring of 2015 I taught a course titled “The American Biographical Novel,” which was, by far, my most successful senior seminar. In this class, students spent considerable time examining the changes authors made to the biographical and historical record, and sought to explain the aesthetic justifications and values of such changes. But one student, who was an English and secondary education major, posed some very important questions: is this form of fiction suitable for children? In other words, given that authors of biofiction alter biographical and historical facts, should elementary or secondary education teachers use this type of literature in the classroom? If so, are there potential dangers? And how should teachers address these dangers? As it happens, I have two daughters who were at that time nine and eleven. In an effort to understand better the value and potential danger of biofiction for children, I asked my daughters and a couple of their friends to read Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris’s biographical novel Girl in a Cage. During a dinner, we had an evening of conversation about the novel. The girls explained why they liked the novel and discussed some of the themes. But we also talked about some of the potential problems—that the authors invented some characters and scenes and changed some historical and biographical facts. It was during this part of the conversation that I discovered that there were deep divisions among young readers