Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is an example of the novelization of a biography. The author takes the actual events in the life of a real person and recounts those events in the same way that they would tell the story of a fictional person. This can make the story more fun to read, and it makes history easier to remember. Writers of biographical novels have to be careful because they don’t want to make anything up that didn’t really happen, but they do want the reader to understand what the character is thinking and feeling. Sometimes the writer can use diaries or journals written by the subject of the story or they might use letters written by the person, or even letters written about them by a friend or relative..

Nathaniel Bowditch burned all his personal correspondence before he died, but all of his journals were preserved. Also, because Nathaniel was related to and came in contact with many influential people, those people often wrote about him in their own letters, so in some cases, Jean Lee Latham knew exactly what Nat thought and felt, and in other cases, she could make a pretty good guess.

A fictionalized biography is different from historical fiction. Historical fiction is about a fictional person living in a particular historical time. For example, Johnny Tremaine (1943) by Esther Forbes is a work of historical fiction set in Boston near the start of the American Revolution. More recent examples of historical fiction written for children are the American Girl stories (1986-present) about girls living in different places and periods in American history. Little House on the Prairie (1932) and its sequels by Laura Ingalls Wilder are an example of a semi-autobiographical story in which the author is telling a fictionalized version of her own life story.