My Favorite Books: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Hi all! Since this week's Did You Know... featured C.S. Lewis, I figured I would talk a little about a book that he wrote. As I've mentioned many times before on this blog I am a big fan of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. A while back, I wrote about the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I thought I'd share a little bit about the third book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I first had this book read to me by my mother when I was about 12 or so. Mom used to read a couple of chapters every night after dinner while my four brothers and sisters and I were still seated at the table. She started with the first book and wound up reading through the first four or five books before I decided to read the rest on my own because she was going too slowly!

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for this book. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader only the two youngest Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy, return to Narnia. The are accompanied, unwillingly, by their cousin, Eustace Scrubb. Eustace is a real pill. Anyway, they land in the ocean and are picked up by King Caspian and hauled aboard his ship, the Dawn Treader. Caspian is on a journey to the Lone Islands and beyond to find the seven banished lords of Narnia. Along the way, they have many wonderful adventures.

As a youngster, this book really captured my imagination. I loved all of the interesting places they went and the things they did. The island of the Dufflepuds was both funny and suspenseful. The chilling waters of Death Island were fascinating, and their encounter with a dragon was unique to say the least. I also liked Eustace's journey from insufferable lout to a really nice guy.

As I said before, this book left an impression on me. In fact, I can see some similarities in the third book in my Deliverers series, The Golden Dragon of Ang. Now, the themes in my book differ from those in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but as I reread the book after writing it, I could see influences of Lewis' book sprinkled subtly throughout. For instance, the Deliverers travel across an island chain, the Dragon Islands. It contains a mysterious rhyme (Reepicheep the recited a rhyme that was said over him when he was little), they travel from island to island and have adventures. There is even talk of a dragon.

Do you have any thoughts about Voyage of the Dawn Treader or any of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia series? If so, I'd love to hear about them!

My Favorite Books: My Brother Sam is Dead

It's been a while since I wrote an installment of this column. In the last one, I wrote about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Today, I want to talk about another book I loved as a child, and one that I still enjoy, My Brother Sam is Dead by Christopher and James Lincoln Collier.

Why this is one of my favorite books.

I've got a few reasons:

1. First of all, the events depicted in the book take place in the same area in which I grew up. One of the places they travel through, Ridgebury, is the section of Ridgefield, CT in which I grew up. It sparked my imagination to think of them traveling right by my house. It didn't matter that our property was a farmer's field back then.

I knew all the landmarks that were mentioned and had been to Putnam Park in Redding, which was the site of General Putnam's winter encampment. It made history come alive. Check out this link to see what some of the book's locations look like today.

2. It's a historical novel about the American Revolution. I love historical novels, especially those relating to the revolution. In addition to this book, I love Johnny Tremain, April Morning, and Silver for General Washington.

One day, I'm going to write a novel for kids set during the American Revolution. I just need to hit on the right idea. Eric & Stig travel back in time to assist? Hmmm.....

3. The final reason that I really love this book is that one of the authors, Christopher Collier, spoke to my class when I was in the second grade. I had received a copy of the book for Christmas, and I brought it to school that day, and he autographed it. Still have it. Cool.

What I didn't know when I first read it.

I didn't know much about the historical events depicted in this book. I knew about the Battle of Ridgefield (small battle, but still cool), and the burning of Danbury, but nothing about what life was like in that area during the revolution. I also didn't know anything about the winter encampment of General Wooster's army, or that the area was a Tory hotbed.

In some ways, this book influenced me when I was writing my book, The Deliverers: Sharky and the Jewel. The village of Calendria in my book is based on a colonial village. My first taste of that in literature was My Brother Sam is Dead.

What are some book that you read when you were young, or are reading today, that have had a big influence on you?

My Favorite Books: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Last week, I introduced this column, and I have to admit that I didn't think it through as well as I wanted. This week, I'm writing about a book that really introduced me to the whole fantasy genre, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

Why is this one of my favorite books?

As I said above, this is the book that really introduced me to the fantasy genre. I've told the story before about how my mother would read us all a chapter of LWW every day at the dinner table. I was about 12 or 13, and it just sparked something in me. I think it was the idea that you could just walk through something ordinary, like a wardrobe, and enter into another world. That was something that caught my imagination.

What I didn't know when I first read it.

I had no idea when I first read any of  The Chronicles of Narnia that C.S. Lewis was anthing other than a darn fine fantasy author. I had never heard of any of his philosophical or spiritual works. I am embarassed to admit that I still haven't read much of his other writing.

I also had no idea  that the chronicles were allegorical. Now when I read them, I can see a lot of the hidden meaning. I think it's kind of cool that Lewis was able to convey a lot of the themes of Christianity in a series of books that are such good reads.

When I was writing The Deliverers, I had a hard time trying to get across the theme of Eric struggling with his father's death and his feelings of guilt. It was only after I stopped trying so hard that the message was able to come through naturally. Go figure.

I also didn't know that C.S. Lewis anf J.R.R. Tolkien were good friends, and that they were part of a writing group called The Inklings. This group of Oxford professors would gather to listen to each other read whatever they were writing at the time, and offer critiques. Believe it or not, I had no idea who Tolkien was. I would a short time later!



Why I would recommend this book to others.

I would recommend this book because of it's simplicity. There aren't a lot of wasted words in this book. It's very simple and direct, just a good story without a lot of window dressing. This book allows you to paint the pictures in your mind. I love that. There's nothing like imagination for making a book come alive.

Also, who wouldn't like to go to another world, and become a king or queen? Lucy, Peter, Edmund, and Susan liberated an entire country, just by being who they are, and remembering who they are. What a great message!

Writing--It's Fantastic!

So, how did I get started writing fantasy, and writing it for tweens? I've always loved to read. Reading has been a staple ever since I read my first book on my own about a farmer who takes a big wheel of cheese to the market in town in a wheelbarrow, and loses it. It rolls up hill and down with the farmer chasing after it.

But that's kind of beside the point. My mother was (and is) of the opinion that a love of reading should be cultivated at a young age, and nurtured through those "difficult" middle grade years. In an effort to do this, she started reading to myself and my four siblings at the dinner table.

Every night when dinner was over, and the dishes had been cleared away, my mom would read a chapter of a book. The first book she read to us was "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, the first in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I must have been 12 or 13 and I was entranced by the book. It let my imagination take flight, and took me to places I'd never known existed. Here's a picture of the edition she read to us from:

It's the 70's version. Kind of harkens back to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. There's something a little Paul and Ringoish about Peter and Edmund.

I'd always been a fan of fantasy to some degree. In addition to my love of "Where the Wild Things Are" when I was younger, I also loved "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Phantom Tollbooth", among others. But on some level, I connected more deeply with this book.

Mom read the whole book over the course of a couple of weeks. Then, she moved on to book 2 of the Chronicles, "Prince Caspian". She read one or two more, but by the time she'd finished with book two, I'd raced far ahead. In no time, I'd devoured all seven books of the Chronicles and was looking for more.



That's when my mom suggested I check out "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien. That was well and truly it. I was hooked. From there it was on to "The Lord of the Rings". Things haven't been the same since.



This started me on my way. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to write fantasy novels for children. I started right away. I made the mistake of trying to write an 8th book of the Chronicles of Narnia--not a good idea. Then, I started a fantasy epic of my own inspiration, complete with a map and everything.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't think anything has survived from that ill fated manuscript. After that I bided my time. Something else grabbed my writing attention around this time and on into high school and college--comedy. But that's a story for another day.