How far should writers attempt to tailor the past to today’s children, Nicholas Tucker asks

Historical fiction for children is going through a renaissance even though there has never been greater awareness of its inherent difficulties. Every writer shares the problem of whether to make characters from the past talk in old-fashioned English and risk puzzling young readers, or let them chat away as they might today. They must also decide whether otherwise decent characters should be shown enjoying disgusting but once popular practices such as bear-baiting, at the risk of alienating modern children.

There is also the difficulty of trying to enter the mind-set of the past when it is much easier for writer and readers to imagine historical characters dressed up in antique clothing but sharing typical contemporary sensibilities. These and other issues are discussed in this book, made up of 17 short chapters contributed by academics, authors, illustrators and educationists. Highlights include an excellent article by Gillian Lathey on language in historical fiction, and a thoughtful piece by Linda Hall on classic time-slip stories. She makes the point that writers who go in for approving fictional visions of the past, of the type sometimes derided as cock-eyed escapism, can now claim to be essentially radical.

By questioning modern consumerist values and the debasement of the environment that follows in their wake, nostalgic visions of once pleasant landscapes have a new political relevance.

Liz Thiel, writing about historical fiction and working children, makes a valid point when she warns against always describing the experience of an unprivileged childhood in the past as hell. To do so is to suggest that only in recent times has anything like proper childhood existed, whatever the reservations future historians may have about what has happened to children in Britain over the past century.

A more relaxed note is provided by Michael Foreman, who writes about his trio of war reminiscences from War Boy to the equally unforgettable After the War Was Over. In a chapter written 10 years ago for Children’s Literature in Education and now reprinted, Philip Pullman provides fascinating background information to his Victorian crime series (The Ruby in the Smoke and other novels, published by Scholastic Press). His contribution is easy to read, as are those of Berlie Doherty and Rosemary Sutcliff - a lesson some of the academic writers here should take to heart.

But not the excellent Geoff Fox, whose chapter on teaching history to children by staging his own play is full of happy phrases and useful tips. What a pity that the play in question, first accepted but then rejected by a major publisher, seems unlikely now to be available for other schools to try out for themselves.

Nicholas Tucker is a senior lecturer in cultural and community studies at Sussex University