Author Research is Important/ Imaginary Geography
I've been reading Holes by Louis Sacher to my students. Research shows that students who are read to consistently in English pick up the language exponentially quicker than those who don't.
Chapter Seven talks about Stanley's great great grandfathers adventures in Latvia, and it's integral to the plot that he carried a pig up a nearby mountain many times. All fine and good.
However I have a student in my class from Latvia. She had an amused look on her face after we read that chapter and told us all that. "Latvia doesn't have ANY mountains. Only a few tiny hills. It's all flat land."
I blinked. In his defense I commented, "Is it possible that 100 years ago that Latvia was large and included an area that had mountains?"
"No, there are no mountain in that area. He really needed to do his research."
I took a quick look at a world map that shows such things. It took ten seconds to do- shows that Belorussia, Estonia, Lithuwania.... are mountain-less. The nearest mountains are deep into Russia or the far side of Poland.
Oops.
This book has won the following awards
1999 Newbery Medal
1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature
A Christopher Award for Juvenile Fiction
An ALA Notable Book
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
An ALA Quick Pick for Young Adults
A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year
A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Book
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Notable Children's Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Bestseller
A Horn Book Fanfare Title
A Riverbank Review 1999 Children's Book of Distinction
A New York Public Library Children's Book of 1998-100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
A Texas Lone Star Award Nominee
A NECBA Fall List Title
I know the book is fiction and should be, but it's set in the real world and they mentioned a specific country. He didn't say "Western Europe" or something vague like that. I can believe that there might have been a lake once in Texas somewhere that dried up, but a mountainless country became flat in the last 100 years? Much less creditable.
I'm just surprised that the author didn't check this out first. I wonder if this has been translated into Latvian and what they think of it there.
It's at moments like this that I am glad that most of my fiction is offworld and therefore is less likely to have this sort of issue ever come up.
Chapter Seven talks about Stanley's great great grandfathers adventures in Latvia, and it's integral to the plot that he carried a pig up a nearby mountain many times. All fine and good.
However I have a student in my class from Latvia. She had an amused look on her face after we read that chapter and told us all that. "Latvia doesn't have ANY mountains. Only a few tiny hills. It's all flat land."
I blinked. In his defense I commented, "Is it possible that 100 years ago that Latvia was large and included an area that had mountains?"
"No, there are no mountain in that area. He really needed to do his research."
I took a quick look at a world map that shows such things. It took ten seconds to do- shows that Belorussia, Estonia, Lithuwania.... are mountain-less. The nearest mountains are deep into Russia or the far side of Poland.
Oops.
This book has won the following awards
1999 Newbery Medal
1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature
A Christopher Award for Juvenile Fiction
An ALA Notable Book
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
An ALA Quick Pick for Young Adults
A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year
A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Book
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Notable Children's Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Bestseller
A Horn Book Fanfare Title
A Riverbank Review 1999 Children's Book of Distinction
A New York Public Library Children's Book of 1998-100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
A Texas Lone Star Award Nominee
A NECBA Fall List Title
I know the book is fiction and should be, but it's set in the real world and they mentioned a specific country. He didn't say "Western Europe" or something vague like that. I can believe that there might have been a lake once in Texas somewhere that dried up, but a mountainless country became flat in the last 100 years? Much less creditable.
I'm just surprised that the author didn't check this out first. I wonder if this has been translated into Latvian and what they think of it there.
It's at moments like this that I am glad that most of my fiction is offworld and therefore is less likely to have this sort of issue ever come up.