Read historical fiction with illustrations
Key Notes :
📖 What is Historical Fiction?
- A fictional story set in the past.
- Characters and events may be imagined, but they are based on real historical settings, customs, or events.
- Often includes real people, places, or events from history.
🧒 Features of Historical Fiction:
- Historical Setting: Takes place in a specific time in history (e.g., World War II, Ancient Egypt).
- Authentic Details: Clothing, language, tools, and customs are realistic to that time.
- Blended Reality and Fiction: Mix of real events and fictional characters or situations.
- Historical Problems: Characters may face real problems from that time (e.g., war, migration, poverty).
🖼️ Role of Illustrations:
- Bring the story to life with visuals.
- Help students understand unfamiliar objects or settings from the past.
- Support comprehension by showing expressions, actions, or scenery.
- Provide clues about the time period (like clothes, tools, houses, etc.).
🧠 Reading Skills to Practice:
- Identify the time period based on text and illustrations.
- Compare the past and present (e.g., clothing, lifestyle, technology).
- Use context clues and pictures to understand unknown words or objects.
- Summarize the story and explain how the setting affects the plot and characters.
✅ Why It’s Important:
- Builds understanding of history and empathy for people in different times.
- Strengthens reading comprehension with both text and images.
- Encourages critical thinking about what life was like in the past.
Learn with an example
🐵Read the first part of the story.
Egg Hunt
- The screen door swings open. Elias and Abigail run down the stairs of the front porch of their farmhouse.
- They stop in the dirt farmyard where a few chickens peck at the ground. Elias pulls some breadcrumbs from his pocket and feeds them to his favourite chicken.
- ‘You’re going to miss me when I leave to become a blacksmith, won’t you, Dottie?’ he coos as the hen eats from his hand. ‘But luckily Abigail is going to learn how to collect eggs. The best egg hunter in East Anglia is going to teach her.’
- Abigail rolls her eyes. Her brother loves to talk about how good he is at everything.
- ‘Collecting eggs is an important job, and it might be hard for you at first,’ Elias tells Abigail. ‘But maybe someday you’ll be almost as good as me!’
- ‘Finding eggs every morning can’t be that hard,’ Abigail replies.
What does Abigail probably think about Elias?
- She thinks that he brags about himself too much.
- She thinks that he will be a great blacksmith.
- She thinks that he can help her learn to collect eggs.
- She thinks that he is better than her at farm chores.
In the story, Elias calls himself ‘the best egg hunter in East Anglia’. He also says that ‘maybe someday’ Abigail will be as good at collecting eggs as he is.Abigail rolls her eyes because her brother always talks about how good he is at things.
Sometimes, people roll their eyes when they think that an idea is silly or they have heard it many times before. So, you can guess that Abigail thinks that her brother brags about himself too much.
🐵Read the first part of the story.
Summer in the City
- Walt opened his eyes. He had dreamed he was hearing his rooster crow, but it was really a car horn honking. He climbed out of bed and looked out the window at Youngstown, Ohio in America. The road outside his aunt and uncle’s house was already full of cars. Where do all of these people need to go so quickly? Walt thought.
- When Walt had arrived for the summer, Alfie had told him that everyone in cities owned their own cars—even the babies! His older cousin often made up stories to joke with Walt. But looking at the number of cars outside, Walt wondered if this one was true.
- Walt thought about his parents. They had probably already milked the cows and were eating a quiet breakfast. It was 1920 in both places, but Youngstown felt like a new and noisy future.
🐵Where does Walt normally live?
- in a flat
- near the sea
- in a big city
- on a farm
In the story, Walt thinks he hears a rooster and mentions his parents milking the cows. He is also not used to all of the people and cars in the city.
Roosters and cows are usually found on farms. Also, someone who is used to living on a farm might find it very different to be in a city. So, you can guess that Walt normally lives on a farm.
🐱Read the first part of the story.
Leaving Ireland
- My family and I were sitting around the dinner table. Mother had made boiled cabbage again. I tried not to make a face.
- ‘Peggy, remember when we used to get potatoes every day?’ my little sister, Mary, whispered to me.
- I did remember. But last year, a terrible disease destroyed most of the potato crops in Ireland. The disease turned the potatoes black, and then we had nothing to eat but cabbage. Sometimes we would go to sleep without eating anything at all.
- ‘I have some important news,’ said Father. ‘Next week we’re leaving Ireland.’ Mary and I were too surprised to speak.
- ‘Where are we going?’ my brother, Cormac, asked.
- Father’s eyes brightened, and he smiled for the first time in a long time. ‘To America.’
What is the most likely reason why Peggy’s family is leaving Ireland?
- They are tired of eating potatoes in Ireland.
- They have friends in America.
- There isn’t enough food in Ireland.
- The weather in Ireland is too cold.
In the story, Peggy says that the potatoes in Ireland have been destroyed, so all they have to eat is cabbage. Peggy also says that sometimes her family goes to sleep without eating anything.
When people go to sleep without eating, it usually means they don’t have enough food. So, you can guess that Peggy’s family is leaving because there isn’t enough food in Ireland.
let’s practice!
Read the first part of the story.
Lighthouse Lonely
- The Iris cut through the choppy waves, approaching Pebble Island Light. Standing on the deck, Thomas spotted a girl waving from the rocks. Was it her? The girl he’d seen standing there on their last trip to Pebble Island?
- Now that his father was the winter lighthouse keeper at Boonie Island, Thomas was cut off from all his old friends—at least, until he could return to the mainland in the spring. No wonder he had started tagging along on the boat that delivered the post and supplies to nearby islands along America’s northeast coast!
- ‘Special delivery!’ The captain returned from the shore and handed Thomas an envelope. Surprised, Thomas opened it to find a recent issue of Young Folks magazine dated October 1881. A note read, ‘Sometimes it’s lonely out here. A good read helps. I hope you enjoy Chapter One of ‘Treasure Island’ as much as I did! More to come, Abigail McHenry.’
Thomas looked up and saw the girl again, waving as the Iris left the dock. He waved back.
