In this article the author, Amy Maythaler, recognizes how Alan Gratz in a majority of his novels utilizes empathy through historical fiction to create a stronger and deeper understanding of the books and their topics. Gratz does this in a number of ways. First, he tells the stories in the eyes of young children, making the reader know what the historical fiction topics are like through the eyes of a kid. This allows the reader to view the topics as personal rather than just a story. Another way Gratz does this is by showing multiple viewpoints of the same conflict. Doing this shows how people with different roles and backgrounds go about the conflict, showing that history is very complex. A third way Gratz does this is by not shying away from hard or painful topics. By writing truthfully about hard topics readers are able to emotionally connect with the characters and better understand the weight of the situation. Lastly, Gratz tells the stories as human experiences not statistics. If the reader just looks at numbers and charts they don’t connect and feel the hardships of the topics, but by reading a character’s thoughts, actions, fears, and struggles people are able to view the character as an actual person.
Throughout this article Diane Webber explains how Gratz’s books can be beneficial educational tools. For example, Webber focuses on the book Refugee and how her class needed to take breaks from reading it because of how much information the students learned. Webber explains that Gratz does this in different ways, such as humanizing refugees, teaching moral complexity, and connecting past and present. Humanizing refugees to someone that only knows them as what they are allows for deeper moral understanding. Showing refugees as “people like us”, the students connect to their fears, hopes, and relationships and compare them to their own. Teaching moral complexity or that there are sometimes no good options to a younger crowd, enhances the brain and educates them to think deeper than just black or white. This adds more color or sides to their thought processes. It shows that sometimes characters have to pick the “bad decision” for the best possible outcome. The last way Gratz makes it a great teaching tool is by connecting the past to the present. This helps younger students make connections and see patterns from the historical topics to reality and reinforces their critical thinking. Learning about historical events can sometimes be complex for children, but encouraging them to connect the events to the present ultimately adds better understanding to such complex ideas.
This article goes deeper into the book Refugee. The book’s themes and motifs such as identity vs. visibility, family sacrifice & support, and hope, despair, and resilience are what make the reader better understand the story. The theme identity vs. visibility is such an important topic because it teaches the reader to see the characters, not just know of the character. The character’s identity is just who they are, it doesn’t go into depth of them. The character’s visibility is how the reader sees the character. So when Gratz shows the character visibility not just the identity, the readers are able to connect and relate to the characters on a deeper level. Ultimately causing the reader to better understand the story and the hardships in the book. The theme of family sacrifice & support is another very important topic. The ultimate goal of a refugee is to seek a better place for living, and usually when that is needed is because of family. So to demonstrate multiple stories of the refugees allows the reader to feel the support and love the families have for each other. The last theme mentioned hope, despair, and resilience. The characters go through all these hardships, but they stay positive and hopeful throughout it all. Demonstrating the perseverance of the characters, making the reader care for and hope for the characters.
In this last article going even deeper into Refugee it explains how there are many different themes throughout the book. The first one being coming of age and trauma. In the book Josef’s father went to a concentration camp. So, Josef had a lot of trauma and depression, but he still had to take upon the role of his father to take care of his mother and younger sister. Making him grow up at the age of twelve. Then the article goes into the theme of empathy vs. cruelty. In the book the refugees are faced with many interactions with non-refugees, but some of the interactions are cruel while the other few are empathetic. Some of the interactions the refugees get ignored and show how cruel some people could be, but there are sometimes where they got helped and showed the empathy of some people. The last main theme of the book is hope vs. despair. Throughout the book it talks about how hope leads them to tomorrow. There are many reasons to experience despair in traumatic events, but the little bits of hope the characters experienced keep them going.