SOURCE: "A Milestone of Historical Fiction for Children: 'Otto of the Silver Hand'," in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer, 1983, pp. 25-26, 34.

In the following essay, Usrey considers Otto of the Silver Hand a groundbreaking historical children's novel because of its development of believable characters and its historically accurate rendering of dialogue and setting.

Along with Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Howard Pyle's Otto of the Silver Hand is one of the first historical novels written for children by an American. It is also one of the most remarkable, and it set the standard for many novels written since. There are two kinds of historical novels: those using both actual and fictional historical events and people, and those that use a historical period with fictional people and events. With the exception of Rudolph I and King Ottocar of Bohemia, there are no actual historical people...