When I was a middle-grade reader, the craze for dystopian fiction for children was at its height. The Hunger Games, The Declaration, The Knife of Never Letting Go – series which I pored over, and which invited their readers to make links between the imagined future they showed and the problems facing contemporary society. Whilst these books might have politicised a generation, when it comes to understanding the world around us, there is no substitute for reading history.
My novel Deep Dark is set in the 1830s, and Cassia Thorne encounters many of the social issues of that era. She is surrounded by London’s street children, who make their living precariously at London’s markets and fairs. Her friend Teo is one of the many Italian children trafficked to London at this time to work as a street musician, only for him to be lured first into the arms of a criminal gang and then into a terrible conspiracy. She tours London’s workhouses and rookeries and sees for herself not just poverty and despair, but the actors who have a vested interest in maintaining that poverty, or who are indifferent to suffering. Whilst Cassia Thorne and her friends confront a monster lurking in the depths of London’s secret rivers, they also have to confront the cruelties of nineteenth century.
That, for me, is part of the great value of a historical novel. It provides a contained, safe setting for children to recognise cruelty. Growing up, I loved reading stories of pickpockets and chimney sweeps, and I know I wasn’t the only one. Aside from the perceived excitement of a world where children fend for themselves with no grown-ups, I think there is a fascination with a society where nastiness was an everyday occurrence, where children were often victims of indifference or malice. Few of the issues in Cassia Thorne’s London have disappeared. Child poverty, trafficking and homelessness are all prevalent in today’s society, some of which our child readers will be aware of on some level. Reading about them with the layers of separation that both history and fantasy provide allows children to make connections between the events of the past and the reality of the present day.
More than that. I think it’s important for children not just to recognise the terrible things people did in the past, but also to see that not everyone went along with them – that there were people who stood up for what was right and made a difference. Who set up ragged schools so that children could be kept off the streets (with Italian-speaking teachers who could educate the immigrant children); who organised protests against measures designed to crush the spirits of the poor; who investigated corrupt and illegal practices in institutions and exposed them for what they were.
The world can be a frightening place to grow up in. But for children, reading historical fiction can show them how to survive it, and how they might go on to change things themselves.
A Cassia Thorne Mystery: Deep Dark by Zohra Nabi is available now.