The 5th grade book group met last Tuesday afternoon to discuss Crispin: Cross of Lead by Avi, and the result was an example of how a great book can generate a great discussion.

Crispin has inspired an incredible fan base in this book group, and two of the girls have been so enthusiastic and effusive in their praise of the book that they have led many of their classmates (kids who do not belong to the book group) to find and read the book and its sequel.  As a fantasy-weary adult, I am thrilled to see so many young readers excited about a work of historical fiction, and I decided that it would be fun to steer a chunk of our discussion towards the historical core of the book.

But before we discussed the history behind the fiction, the group first shared their favorite parts of the book with each other.  The character of Bear topped the list of favorites, and we talked a bit about his personality and how lucky Crispin was to find/be found by Bear.  And it became clear from our discussion that one major strong point of this novel is the contrast between Bear and John Aycliffe, and the way that contrast creates a dynamic tension in the story.  The group members loved the forward-moving action of the story, but also appreciated the way that the slower moments of the book build Crispin’s back story and help readers better understand his character (for example, some kids mentioned at first that they were a bit bored by the start of the story, but as we talked, we came to a consensus that Crispin’s character would be difficult to appreciate if we didn’t have a sense for what a non-entity he had been his entire life).

After a bit, I transitioned the discussion over to an examination of the historical aspects of the book.  Some of the kids were not entirely sure what “historical fiction” means and how it differs from “realistic fiction,” so we spent some time puzzling out a working definition of the term historical fiction.  Once that was under our belt, we talked about which aspects of the story were based upon actual history, and which parts were fiction.  Though this discussion won’t translate well to this blog post, it was incredibly productive and enlightening for most (if not all) of the group members, me included. 

The meeting ended on an enthusiastic upbeat; and the very best part, for me, was that there was not a single mention of Harry Potter for that 45 minutes.  Blissful.