While movies like Saving Private Ryan have been credited with providing an accurate depiction of World War II, it can still be difficult to get the real story behind historical events across to students.
However, Public School No. 2 in West New York uses an interdisciplinary approach to teaching in its seventh and eighth grade classes history.
To help these students learn about the Revolutionary War, the students not only read the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier. They also got a visit from James Collier on April 24.
James Collier has written more than 50 books and a series of eight historical novels with Christopher, his brother, a historian and teacher.
“Our central focus is [James] Collier’s books sometimes,” said School Facilitator Stacy Olivera.
James Collier also has published more than 600 magazine articles in publications including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy and the Village Voice.
Painting the past
The idea for writing historical fiction came from Christopher Collier. Christopher was a professional historian who had been teaching middle school students. He was looking for a way to make his history lessons stick with them.
The Colliers co-wrote eight books in a historical fiction series, with Christopher performing research and doing an outline and James turning them into novels.
“It was a natural team,” said James Collier, about a writer working with a historian.
My Brother Sam Is Dead, the first of that series published in 1974, won many awards and was named a Newbury Honor Book and an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book.
This book takes place during the American Revolution in the small town of Redding, Conn. While the development of the characters may be fiction, the course of events and names of the people are real.
James Collier explained to the students at Public School No. 2 that his brother went into a graveyard in Redding and found the names of people who had lived in the town during the Revolution.
“We didn’t know much about these people,” said Collier. “But we used their names in the book.”
Many of the events that took place were also factual. Christopher Collier found a court case in a library from that time and used the testimony of one of the witnesses as his basis for one of the more bloody events that took place in the book. The case was of a private citizen who sued the United States because his slave had been killed in the war after soldiers invaded his home.
“We included it in the book because it happened,” said James Collier about receiving criticism for including one of the book’s most bloody scenes in the novel. “We knew it happened.”
“We are trying to give the real picture of the past,” Collier added. He said that most movies show war as something fun. “We are not giving you the television or movie version,” he said. “War is not fun.”
His best advice
James Collier, who spent 40 years of his life as a writer, credits the amount of time he spent reading for his career decision.
“I was a reader,” said Collier to the seventh and eighth grade students at West New York’s Public School No. 2. “I was one of those kids that loved to read.”
However, after writing more than 50 books and about 600 magazine articles, Collier also offered the students some advice on how to write better and faster.
“You will be amazed and dismayed at the amount of writing you will have to do in your life,” said Collier, explaining that any profession they chose to enter would use some type of writing skill.
However, to ease the students into the idea of writing, Collier explained that writing is much like talking.
“If you can talk, you can write,” said Collier. “You have no trouble thinking of things to say when you are talking. Some of you can even talk when you are sleeping.”
Collier told the students to write as if they are talking, explaining that something you write can always be rewritten and fine-tuned.
“When you are up at bat and the pitcher throws you a curve, you are either going to hit it or not. You don’t get a second chance,” said Collier. “When you are writing you are going to have a second chance.”
Collier’s second piece of advice was to try and get inside the character you are writing about.
“I jump out of this world and jump into the world of the people I am writing about,” said Collier. “I am performing an act of the imagination.”