Chapter 11: Realistic Fiction


Chapter 11: Realistic Fiction

Realistic Fiction is the larges subgenre of Fiction as it encompasses historical fiction, contemporary, and some of the subjects that people like to generify libraries by like sports, mystery, etc. The realistic fiction that we are specifically talking about in this chapter is also known as contemporary realistic fiction (as historical fiction was covered in the previous chapter). These stories are most often set during modern time and they are considered believable- consistent with the real world and use characters, settings, and events from the real world.

The contemporary/modern aspect is what best separated this subgenre from historical fiction. It is also important to know the criteria to consider when evaluating this type of fiction. Some questions you might ask yourself while reading Realistic fiction are: Is everything consistent with the real world that contemporary kids live in now? – ask yourself does the speech, behavior and other elements make it believable, and more importantly, does it avoid using stereotypes; Does the theme of the story emerge naturally? - in other words, the story does not seem preachy or try to hit you over the head while reading; Does the topic or subject of the book relate to modern day readers/kids? – are the topics relevant and important to readers of today, like death and loss, sexuality, changing family structures, abuse, etc. These questions help a reader determine the effectiveness of realistic fiction because it looks at three crucial parts of a book that makes it successful/ more realistic: consistency, theme, and modern subject matter.

Reflection:




Realistic fiction relies on the importance of storytelling to the reader. It is most important that realistic fiction allows the reader to experience something new that is rooted in reality. When I think of great contemporary realistic fiction, I think of Laurie Halse Anderson- not that she is the only one, but she is one of my favorites. Anderson’s Speak was published in 1999, nearly 20 years ago, and the story still remains relevant and important to today’s readers. This is what shows the true test of realistic fiction- one of the only things that points out that this book wasn’t written in the last 10 years is that it does not have the use of cell phones in it, which is very important to the behavior of kids in the modern world now. But her themes and subject matter of Speak, and her other realistic fiction works, are still so current and important that this minor detail often slips through the reader’s mind. Recently, Speak was republished as a graphic novel with art done by Emily Carroll in 2018. It continues to be well received and won The Amelia Bloomer Book List award for well-written and well-illustrated books with significant feminist content for young readers. Other books and authors
who expertly write realistic fiction that withstands the test of time: Chris Crutcher, Sherman Alexie, John Green, and Jay Asher. Some other up-in-coming authors who are very successful with this genre and exemplifying the topics and issues needed to be discussed today are: Angie Thomas, Jason
Reynolds, Kwame Alexander, and Nic Stone. These authors are well known and important in today’s realistic fiction because they do not shy away from the world’s problems and they also portray diverse perspectives that we need to hear and be represented today.

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