If history is the new rock n’ roll, with best-selling books and TV series making millionaires out of Simon Schama, David Starkey and Niall Ferguson, then children’s history books are catching up fast. Ever since Terry Deary’s Horrible History series for Scholastic delighted children of 7+ by concentrating on the gruesome, gory aspects of the Romans, Tudors, Victorians etc., children’s publishers have become aware that history books, whether factual or fictional, are potential gold-mines.

Deary’s series, which cunningly impart a good deal of fact alongside the entertainment, are irresistibly subversive, but this approach has its limitations, especially for children of 7-11 studying the National Curriculum. This requires a surprisingly thorough grounding of knowledge about the Vikings, Romans, Greeks, Tudors, Victorians and the Second World War. Parents over 35 may have fond memories of the Ladybird series of history books, and all lament the problems still besetting Doring Kindersley, whose large, clear books were models of their kind. However the Who Was? series are something worth hunting down.

Launched with 6 books in 2001, they are part of the Short Books series started by Rebecca Nicolson and Aurea Carpenter.
“ Having started with narrative non-fiction for adults, we were keen to continue with modern versions of history books we’d enjoyed such as the Ladybird books,” Nicolson says. “The ones available seemed very fact-orientated, trying to drum the subject in, or else the utterly brilliant Horrible Histories which we didn’t want to copy like so many publishers. History is about stories, and we thought that if we got leading journalists to write them they’d be totally different, but a pleasure.”

Though visually unappealing and desperately in need of good illustrations, the Who Was? biographies are written in clear, vigorous prose and bring a refreshing sense of drama to their subjects. Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, William Shakespeare and more exictingly obscure figures such as Ada Lovelace (inventor of the first computer) Madame Tussaud (of waxwork fame) and Philip Astely (inventor of the circus) spring to life. Any child already hooked on history will lap them up, but younger ones need more visual help.

This is where OUP’s acquisition of Stephen Biesty, king of Dopring Kindersley’s beloved cross-sections books, is a complete triumph. His first book for them, Rome, takes the madly detailed technique of Where’s Wally and tells the story of Titus Cotta Maximus and his father as they spend a festival day together in the Rome of AD128. The drawings buzz and hum with life, and the effect is like looking into a bee-hive as Titus’s family get up, slaves bustle about cooking, dogs fight over bones, thieves attack pedestrians and thousands of Romans use the public baths or watch the games at the Colosseum. As Ben Dupre, Biesty’s editor at OUP, says, “it works at more levels because of the illustrations. Beauty is something pretty rare in this king of book.”

Like other publishers, he was intrigued by the success of the Horrible Hisotires series, which he sees as a landmark, but his reservation is that “history books shouldn’t depend on sugaring the pill with jokes. If history is anything it’s a wonderful collection of fantastic stories.”

The Biesty books, which take a year to do, were Dupre’s idea and struck a chord on both sides as inherently more interesting as an approach to schoolwork than those by Usborne promoted by the National Curriculum, which tend to analyse minute data at the expense of the bigger picture. Leading Oxford historians are consulted as to every detail, but what children will probably enjoy most as spotting Biesty’s wicked little pictures of people sitting on the toilet. One on Egypt is planned for 2005, with Athens to follow. Younger children will also enjoy Richard Brassey’s Brilliant Brits (Orion £3.99), who include Henry Vlll, Boudicca, the Beatle and David Beckham. Brassey also illustrated Geraldine McCaughrean’s simply brilliant 20 Tales from British History series, which no bright child should be without, and his lively, colourful cartoons are perfect for the 8-12 range.

A more novelistic approach comes from Scholastic’s My Story series, which read like a superior version of the kind of essays secondary school children often get asked to write. Imaginary characters tell the story of the Civil War, the Battle of Trafalgar, the Trenches and The Blitz. All of these will appeal to boys, but the women’s history angel is not neglected, with Sue Reid’s Diary of a Mill Girl, and Pamela Oldfield’s The Great Plague as particularly good, packed with convincing feeling as well as historical detail. Unlike Hodder’s Who?What? When? Series (£4.99) covering World War l, the Victorians, the Tudors and World War ll they have a grasp of what makes history fun.

Those who want the real thing, however, should look at Alice Leader’s Power & Stone (Puffin £4.99). Like Rosemary Sutcliffe’s immortal novel The Eagle of the Ninth (OUP £4.99), it is set by Hadrian’s Wall, on the borders of England and Scotland, and concerns the growing friendship between Marcus, a Roman commander’s son and Bran, child of the Brigantes. Romance and rebellion brew up a complex plot that takes too long to catch fire, but Leader’s blend of the supernatural with historical detail is excellent, and worth looking out for as a summer read for 9-12s. Caroline Lawrence’s The Roman Mysteries series, (Orion £4.99) feature four children who solve a new mystery in each of the six books. Packed with adventure and effortlessly deployed detail culled from Pliny and Juvenal, they are, if not as fun or funny as Lindsey Davis’s adult Falco series, hugely enjoyable entertainment for the same age-range.

There remains a big gap in historical fiction for children and teachers desperate to flesh out Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum. The Victorians are pretty well covered, thanks to Philip Pullman’s thrilling Sally Lockhart trilogy, but of Geoffrey Trease’s marvellous adventures, only Cue for Treason, concerning a plot to assassinate Elizabeth l during a performance of Romeo & Juliet, remains in print. His equally good novel set in Socratic Athens, A Crown of Violet would do much to interest children in Ancient Greece, just as Catherine Fisher’s The Snow Walker’s Son trilogy (Red Fox £4.99) does the Viking peoples. But where are the modern classics set in the First and Second World Wars? Why is nobody doing for the Tudors what Rosemary Sutcliffe did for the Romans? With so many great adult novelists turning to history for the inspiration of best-selling novels, it can only be a matter of time before publishers realise that this is an area that needs further investigation.

The Independent on Sunday June 2003