Historical fiction, film and food

Help me with my list, please! I’ve decided to give myself a challenge of reading all the 2019 young adult historical fiction books I can find throughout 2020. Historical fiction doesn’t get as much attention as other genres, so I think it will be fun to read each of these books and then post about them when I have finished.

I made this look by checking out the Goodreads list for YA historical fiction and checking each one to fit my parameters. Since the definition of what makes something historical fiction varies depending on who is deciding, I decided to use what used to be a common definition-anything set fifty years or more in the past. Now I know these days, almost 20 years in the past is technically historical to a teenager, but I had to limit my list somehow, so I’m sticking with the 50 year limit, anything set in 1969 or earlier.

I also don’t mind if there are major fantasy elements as long as the setting is an actual place.I removed one from the Goodreads list because it seemed to be a fantasy setting instead of a historical setting.

Here’s my list at this point. I’m going to read them from earliest time period to most recent, but this list is in alphabetical order by title. If you know of any additions, please post in the comments. Thanks!

A Affair of Poisons	Addie Thorley
Across A Broken Shore	Amy Trueblood
All is Fair	Dee Garretson
Among the Fallen	Virginia Frances Schwartz
An Impossible Distance to Fall	Miriam McNamara
Dangerous Alliance: An Austentacious Romance	Jennieke Cohen
Enchantee	Gita Trelease
I Walked the Sky	Lisa Fiedler
In the Neighborhood of True	Susan Kaplan Carlton
Inventing Victoria	Tonya Bolden
Lovely War	Julie Barry
Romanov	Nadine Brandis
Someday We Will Fly	Rachel DeWoskin
Spectacle	Jodie Lynn Zdok
Summer of ’69	Todd Strasser
The Beautiful	Renée Ahdieh
The Downstairs Girl	Stacey Lee
The Fountains of Silence	Ruta Sepetys
The Gilded Wolves	Roshani Chokski
The Hummingbird Dagger	Cindy Anstey
The Lady Rogue	Jenn Bennett
The Last Word	Samantha Hastings
The Raven’s Tale	Cat Winters
The Sword and the Dagger	Robert Cochran
The Weight of a Soul	Elizabeth Tammi
The Weight of Our Sky	Hanna Alkaf
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All	Laura Ruby
White Rose	Kip Wilson
Within These Lines	Stephanie Morrill

I didn’t love gardening as a child. My grandmother lived next door and she had a beautiful garden full of both flowers and vegetables. It was fine to look at but I was more interested in making a play house beneath the branches of the weeping willow in her yard. I especially didn’t like having to help her pick strawberries because they weren’t like the strawberries in the grocery story. They often had bugs on them or mushy parts and of course we always picked them what seemed the hottest of days.

What I did love was the garden in THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The idea of a garden behind walls where you had to go through a door to get into it was an idea I’d never even thought of. Living in a small town in Iowa surrounded by flat fields and small patches of flower gardens, the idea that someone would have the land and take the effort to build a walled garden was mind boggling.

When much later in life I discovered my own love of gardening and went back to school to study landscape horticulture and then teach horticulture courses, I often thought of the book. I’ve spent years creating my own little patches of garden in my own yard and while I don’t have lovely brick walls around it, I think it has somewhat of a feel of a hidden garden.

Today THE SECRET GARDEN is best read as a read aloud with an adult and a child so that the adult could use it as a teaching moment for some of the dated language and attitudes. Or maybe it’s a guilty pleasure read for an adult who wants a little bit of escapism. I know I’m about ready to read it again.

And I’ve got a whole list of adult fiction set in and around gardens that I’ll be posting about soon. Happy reading!