Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Fantasy and Appalachian History in Recent Fiction for Children and Young Adults
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Roberta Herrin offered interesting observations a couple decades ago about why fantasy was rare in Appalachian fiction for children and young adults. Since it has become much more common recently, my paper will explore this change, discussing current authors’ various methods of incorporating fantasy, folklore, and modern social problems into historical fiction for young readers. These novels all have realistic settings based on specific Appalachian places. In Stuck! by Becky Mushko (2011), a contemporary Virginia girl meets a ghost who can’t find her home because it was buried under water after Smith Mountain Lake Dam was built. Angie Smibert’s trilogy in progress began this year with Bone’s Gift. It depicts a girl in a Virginia coal town during World War II, struggling to understand her mother’s death and a secret inherited gift, which causes her to see vivid images from her family’s and community’s past. Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen (2007) reworks the Snow White fairy tale in a novel about a teenager with an evil stepmother in a West Virginia town during the 1930s and 1940s. In the Sarafina trilogy by Robert Beatty (2015-2107), a twelve-year-old ratcatcher at the Biltmore Estate discovers that she is a human-catamount shape-shifter destined to battle against catastrophic forces of evil that threaten the Vanderbilts, their mansion protected by advanced modern inventions, and the natural environment they strive to preserve. Although these novels are not about cities, I hope that discussing an Asheville author’s bestselling Serafina trilogy of “mystery-thrillers,” set in and around the Biltmore at the dawn of industrialization, seems appropriate at this Asheville conference.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Tina L. Hanlon, Professor of English at Ferrum College, co-edited Crosscurrents of Children’s Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism, and directs the website AppLit: Resources for Readers and Teachers of Appalachian Literature for Children and Young Adults. She has published essays on folktales, adaptations in various media, Appalachian children’s and young adult fiction, and teaching Appalachian culture. [Please note that I submitted before midnight on Oct. 16 and never got a receipt. I wrote to Mary Thomas, who asked me to resubmit today.]
Fantasy and Appalachian History in Recent Fiction for Children and Young Adults
Roberta Herrin offered interesting observations a couple decades ago about why fantasy was rare in Appalachian fiction for children and young adults. Since it has become much more common recently, my paper will explore this change, discussing current authors’ various methods of incorporating fantasy, folklore, and modern social problems into historical fiction for young readers. These novels all have realistic settings based on specific Appalachian places. In Stuck! by Becky Mushko (2011), a contemporary Virginia girl meets a ghost who can’t find her home because it was buried under water after Smith Mountain Lake Dam was built. Angie Smibert’s trilogy in progress began this year with Bone’s Gift. It depicts a girl in a Virginia coal town during World War II, struggling to understand her mother’s death and a secret inherited gift, which causes her to see vivid images from her family’s and community’s past. Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen (2007) reworks the Snow White fairy tale in a novel about a teenager with an evil stepmother in a West Virginia town during the 1930s and 1940s. In the Sarafina trilogy by Robert Beatty (2015-2107), a twelve-year-old ratcatcher at the Biltmore Estate discovers that she is a human-catamount shape-shifter destined to battle against catastrophic forces of evil that threaten the Vanderbilts, their mansion protected by advanced modern inventions, and the natural environment they strive to preserve. Although these novels are not about cities, I hope that discussing an Asheville author’s bestselling Serafina trilogy of “mystery-thrillers,” set in and around the Biltmore at the dawn of industrialization, seems appropriate at this Asheville conference.
