As a child I was fascinated by history. Everything from the ancient Egyptians to the Victorians was so enthralling. And I was lucky enough to be taken to just about every museum in London as a kid to feed my inquisitive mind.
This enthusiasm fed into a lot of my teaching and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to teach anything of historical relevance.
I don’t think this slight obsession with history is unique to me, and it’s why I love children’s historical fiction. I do think that a lot of children go through a phase where they need to know and understand why things are the way they are now and where they have come from.
And for some of those children a good old-fashioned textbook is what they need. My husband was one of these kids. He loved an encyclopaedia and gobbled up non-fiction books. I, on the other hand, wanted to know about the stories behind the people who lived in Victorian London. It helped me to understand it more.
So if your little one is a budding historian and wants to follow a story of what it was like ‘back then’, I’ve got some pretty cool books for you to go to.
These children’s historical fiction books are sorted by age from 7 to 11. Emmeline and the Plucky Pup, An Escape in Time, My Family and Other Romans, Gaslight and Secrets of a Sun King are each set in a different time, from Roman Britain to 1922.
Each one says when it’s set and how dark it gets, because some of these get properly grim. The two World Wars have a shelf of their own, so they only come in at the end. Our books for 9 year olds page sits in the middle of the age range.
Historical fiction for 7 and 8 year olds
Emmeline and the Plucky Pup by Megan Rix
Emmeline and the Plucky Pup
It starts one night in 1906, when Alfie’s big sister Daisy wakes him in a Manchester workhouse and they run away. They end up at Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’s front door, where Daisy becomes her maid and Alfie her messenger boy.
Four years later in London, Alfie rescues a skinny Staffie puppy who has just pinched a sheep’s trotter from a market stall. Mrs Pankhurst decides that a boy with a puppy is the perfect disguise for carrying secret messages.
There’s a lot of real history in it, with Votes for Women sashes and a march on Parliament. The march turns rough, the police come on horses and Rascal is nearly trampled. Alfie’s mum died in the workhouse before the story starts. None of it is gory, but it’s sad.
An Escape in Time by Sally Nicholls
An Escape in Time
Ruby and Alex Pilgrim are back at Aunt Joanna’s house for half-term, and Ruby keeps glaring at the big gold mirror in the hall. Then a young governess reaches straight through it and pulls them into 1795.
It’s the same house, only brand new, with no lights, no radiators and no downstairs loo. A countess has just escaped the revolution in France with her son and has nowhere to live, and the children decide the mirror has given them a job.
Ruby gets laced into a corset and the toilet is a wooden hut in the yard. There’s talk of the guillotine, and the men chasing the countess carry muskets. It’s the third Pilgrim book and it mentions the first two, so A Chase in Time is the one to read first.
Historical fiction for 9 year olds
My Family and Other Romans by Marie Basting
My Family and Other Romans
Livi is twelve and lives practically on top of Hadrian’s Wall. Her dad has been wearing a centurion’s cape for a month and gets her attention by firing an arrow at the door knocker. His big dream, a Roman festival called Rome Play, is about to open.
Then Livi says some things to him she can’t take back, and that night he goes missing. Before long she’s following a boy in a toga up the hill, through an arch that wasn’t there before.
Livi talks straight to the reader and she’s very funny. Her mum left when she was a baby, and she and her dad have always been a team, which runs underneath all the jokes. There’s a fair bit about Roman forts and the soldiers’ toilets along the way.
Diary of Dorkius Maximus is Roman too, a very silly diary by a boy who is certain he’s hero material. The Rome in it is gross, with dinner guests being sick into buckets. A gladiator is killed in one flat line at the amphitheatre, and a lot of the jokes are at the expense of the household’s slaves.
In The Wild Way Home, Charlie’s baby brother Dara is born with a heart that isn’t working properly. Charlie runs out of the hospital and into the forest, and the forest turns out to be the Stone Age. The hospital part is hard going, and the fear that the baby could die runs right through it.
The Mystery of the Painted Dragon is set among the art schools and galleries of London in 1909. It’s the third Sinclair’s Mystery and leans on the first two, and the opening chapter, where a young woman is pushed onto the railway tracks with a train coming, is frightening.
Historical fiction for 10 and 11 year olds
Gaslight by Eloise Williams
Gaslight
Nansi Howells was found half drowned at the docks the day her mother disappeared, and remembers nothing from before. Now it’s 1899, she’s fourteen, and she lives in a cellar room under the Empire, a theatre in Cardiff. Some nights she’s on stage, and some nights Sid, who runs the theatre, sends her out to rob rich houses.
Sid says the money is going towards a detective to find her mum. Then a magician’s assistant called Constance moves into Nansi’s tiny room, and Sid casts Nansi in a new act that has “something to do with dead people”.
This one gets frightening, and early. In the second chapter a man bangs her head against a wall, and the next morning Sid strangles her until she’s sure she’ll die. There’s some swearing too. It’s filed at 10, and it’s for a confident reader who doesn’t mind real danger.
Secrets of a Sun King by Emma Carroll
Secrets of a Sun King
It’s November 1922 and Lil is the scholarship girl at a snooty London school where nobody talks to her. Her grandad has just been rushed into hospital, and the morning paper says a professor’s feet have been found on his hearthrug in Bloomsbury, with the rest of him burned away.
Feeding Grandad’s cat, Lil finds a parcel from that same professor. Inside, wrapped in straw, is a golden jar with the head of Anubis on the lid, and Grandad manages to whisper that it’s cursed and has to go back to Egypt.
A second story runs alongside, from a scroll written by a girl who reads dreams, about her friend the boy king Tutankhamun. It’s all happening while Howard Carter is digging for his tomb. Grandad is very ill and coughs blood on the ward, and the burned professor is creepy even as a newspaper story. It’s filed at 11, and there’s more Emma Carroll on her author page.
The Great Fire Dogs is Megan Rix again, for 10 year olds, and it’s set in London in 1666. George, a kitchen apprentice at the palace, trains a puppy called Woofer to turn the meat over the fire, and Woofer becomes best friends with a spaniel sent over from France for King Charles II. The book is honest that stray dogs and cats were killed in the plague year.
Catherine, Called Birdy is a diary from 1290, filed at 11, by a girl whose father is trying to marry her off. She blacks her teeth with soot to put off the first suitor. It’s very funny and very frank. Her father hits her, her mother loses a baby, and she writes about her periods not having started yet.
And the wars
The First and Second World Wars have their own shelf, our war books for kids. Two to start with here.
When We Were Warriors is three Second World War stories by Emma Carroll, and it opens with Stan’s street being bombed while he’s out buying chips. The Bletchley Riddle is set in 1940, when Lizzie’s brother has been sent to Bletchley Park to help crack German codes, and it’s filed at 11.
Just so you know…
Every book on this page is in Little Reads, a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books. They’re in the full library, which is £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
A free account comes with 100+ free books, if you’d like a look round first.