Ann Rinaldi.

Someone who owns a successful independent bookstore told me recently that if I ever decide to write a novel about an officer in the army in the American Revolution I’d better give him dripping fangs, bat wings and a tail. Well, he wasn’t far from wrong, because as we all know, the bestselling young adult novels today are either about vampires, fantasy or romance.

My reply to that was instant. “We had plenty of vampires in our history in this country. Benedict Arnold was one, wasn’t he? Thing is, nobody knew it right away. And if today’s young people are so hungry for blood and killing, I can cite them dozens of instances that would satisfy their lust for our baser instincts.”

Anybody ever hear of the “Mormon Extermination Order” issued in Missouri in 1838? It even had a number—44. Under it hundreds of Mormons were beaten, lynched, murdered, looted, tarred and raped. Just because they were Mormons. Is that scary enough for you, kids? Think that would sell enough books, publishers?

Don’t even talk about slavery! Or the wealthy, refined white planters who put nails into a barrel from the outside, with the sharp ends poking through the inside, then put a slave into the barrel and rolled it down a hill. Even a certified vampire couldn’t come up with that one!

And I promise, there are hundreds of stories in our history like the above that are true, and interesting, that have heroes and heroines and vampires without fangs or bat wings or tails.

Then why, right now, are historical novels such as I write—and I have to date, written at least 39 of them—taking a back seat in many publishing houses, or not selling when published, or not being spoken about in polite literary circles or reviewed in the right magazines?

When I wrote my first historical, Time Enough for Drums, 27 years ago, it was turned down by 10 publishers. I had already written two contemporary YA novels that had sold to paperback and was working fulltime as a general-interest columnist on a daily newspaper in Trenton, N.J. All the publishers said much the same thing. “We can’t give children history. No bookstore will carry it, no child will read it.” I put the novel away in a drawer and went on to write more contempory novels and continued writing my column. But I knew the publishers were wrong. And I was broken-hearted.

Finally, Holiday House in New York (great people), who had already turned Time Enough for Drums down, called me up and said they had changed their mind. They wanted to publish it. And so they did. And Holiday House and other publishers have been asking me for nothing but historicals ever since.

And so I wrote and I wrote. Many others did too. Scholastic came up with its Dear America line and I wrote one of those, and another for its My Name Is America line. In 27 years I have developed a cult following. Young people write to me daily to tell me they have grown up with my books, that my books got them through some of the worst times of their lives, that when they visited historical places with their parents they already knew everything there was to know about them, that when they studied history in school they found out it was no longer boring. That they now understood about their country. And finally that, reading my books, they had had fun and enjoyment and not realized they were learning. And wow, did that neat stuff really happen? And when is the next one coming out?

Now, all of a sudden, the whole ball game seems to be over. We’re back to where we began. Things have come full circle. Historical novels for teens seem to be chopped liver again. Editors tell me, sadly, that they want historicals, but they don’t seem to be selling. Vampires are selling. Fantasy is selling. Teen romance is selling. And the economy is so bad.

And I start to think again about that guy called Benedict Arnold who had them all enthralled because he was such an American hero in the Revolution, until he could no longer hide his fangs and his tail. Or the governor of Missouri, Lilburn W. Boggs, writing out Executive Order No. 44. Or that refined white southern planter ordering those nails to be hammered into that barrel. And how they all hid their fangs, too. And I say again, “heavens to Betsy,” as Martha Washington would say, “the stories in history are a gold mine. And I haven’t even begun to write.”