ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how selecting sources, interpreting and combining them to create an account can create interpretations which may differ, but be equally valid. If children can create their own interpretation through reconstructions this is not only fun but helps them to consider how interpretations are created and their validity. Interpretations of the past are accounts of a period, an event or a person in the past, written in a later period. C. V. Wedgwood's account of the English Civil War is different from that of the Marxist historian Christopher Hill. Children can compare different written accounts at their own levels by comparing different information books on the same historical subject. P. Hoodless found that they were able to identify changing styles of presentation with a subtle understanding that adults' different attitudes are transmitted through historical accounts and stories written in different periods.
