Talk:The History of the Fairchild Family

GA Passed
Hello, I've passed this article. It demonstrates remarkably good prose and textual flow. In addition, the article provides reasonable coverage of all the facets of this book. It is well-cited with evidently scholarly material and is NPOV and stable. My recommendations for improving this article are: adding more illustrations if they exist and expanding the plot summary (it's adequate for GA as it provides broad coverage, but not comprehensiveness). That's all. Thanks for the pleasant reading and the shock of learning that this sort of book was once considered suitable children's literature.--Meowist 03:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Expanding the plot summary will be difficult for two reasons:
 * There are three volumes to cover.
 * The books don't really have a single storyline that is easy to follow. They are mostly collections of stories related in between the adventures of the Sherwood children. Summarizing or even listing all of the those stories would tire the reader out.
 * Do you have any suggestions? I struggle with this all of the time because most eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century children's literature doesn't have a "plot" per se. I plan on writing a great many more pages on this literature, so I need to find a good solution to the problem. Would changing the heading to "Structure of the text" be a good idea? That way, readers would not expect a real plot summary. In the structure section, I could explain that there is no real plot. (I will try to make this clearer in this article.) Awadewit | talk  04:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I will look for more illustrations. I think only one more would fit comfortably on the page. What about you? Awadewit | talk  04:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank for the review. By the way, I noticed you said the article "provides reasonable coverage" of the book. Thank you for being so astute. There is very little scholarship on this book, so I have had to make do with very little material. I cannot really adequately fill out the sections until more articles are published (something I hope to do myself someday). I do not believe that it can reach FA status because of this limitation. Awadewit | talk  04:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, if the books are just a heap of stories about the trouble the children get into and the overall structure appears to be that a of a book of moral tales or fables, then yes changing it to "structure of the text" seems better. I also think that just one more original illustration illustrating the mischeif of these kids would do well. --Meowist 20:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have changed the heading and added an illustration. I'm afraid that there aren't many available. Each edition that I looked at only had one (the frontispiece). Let me know if you think a picture of Sherwood would be better. Awadewit | talk  13:28, 21 July 2007 (UTC)