ABSTRACT
In researching historical fi ction for children and young adult readers, I have come across a range of texts that rely on a living or lived experience of history to frame the historical story. These novels are similar to the time-slip narrative; however, not all examples use the traditional convention of time-slippage. I want to bundle these novels together-‘time-slip’ novels included-as examples of ‘living history’ narratives because they appear from the outset as a distinct literary form requiring particular reading strategies. The strategies I am identifying here are clearly comparable with the visual interpretative strategies required at living history museums. Living history sites use historical artifacts, reconstructions, and actors to provide the museum tourist with a sense of the past as tangible and living. Raphael Samuel (1994) convincingly argues in Theatres of Memory that ‘[i]f there is a unifying thread to these exercises in historical reconstruction it is the quest for immediacy, the search for a past which is palpably and visibly present’ (175). Living history museums offer live historical performances as a means of making the past more accessible to the visitor; re-enactment is underpinned by the principle that living history is more real than its static showcase complement. Nonetheless, this argument, although holding merit as a means of distinguishing museums and as a reason for interest in the fi eld, is less useful on its own to the analysis of literary forms.
