The Inklings (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Dorothy Sayers)
Thoughtful-yet-thrilling fiction
Quirky cruciferous vegetables
If so, do I have a treat for you!
It's a new YA book titled Suzy and the Magic Turnip, the first volume of The Perilous Times Saga.
I first met Stephen (aka S. M. Dunning) almost 15 years ago, in the fall of 2010. At the time I was a teacher and a brand-new father. I was also a brand-new M. A. student, excited to commence my studies in Trinity Western University's MAIH program. Excited, that is, until Dr. Dunning (as I knew him then) strolled into our first afternoon class and began handing out a quiz.
Reader, of all the things I expected from my graduate studies, completing a comprehension quiz about Conrad's Heart of Darkness was not one of them. Much less a quiz that contained a list of obscure vocabulary at the bottom, demanding definitions of at least five terms.
I soundly failed that first quiz. (Lucky for me, quizzes didn't count against grad students' grades. My pride, however ...)
Though robust in its own way, my undergraduate education had failed to teach me the art of reading closely. It favored a fire hydrant approach to literature, boasting that its freshmen students read through a stack of books nearly as tall as they were. "Read," that is.
Yet, while I found myself panicked and wondering what I'd gotten myself into that September afternoon, I soon discovered that I'd stumbled into a gift. Stephen didn't just want us to wax poetic about the books he assigned us. He wanted us to dig into them, to be curious about them, to notice things that were going on beneath the surface.
The quizzes? Ostensibly, they were his means of checking whether or not we'd actually read the assignments. But really, if you paid attention, he was giving you clues. These are things a good reader pays attention to, those dreaded quizzes whispered to us. And as I learned to pay attention to the novels and poetry he assigned, I rediscovered the joy of reading.
That, dear readers, is why you should check out Suzy and the Magic Turnip.
It is not your typical YA novel. While it includes enough adventure, hijinks, and middle-school romance to satisfy most teens, there's a depth to this story that richly rewards a thoughtful reader.
I was ecstatic when Stephen asked me to contribute to this series as a developmental editor. (We've since completed edits on Book Two, which is in the publisher's hands as I type.) It's a special story, and I'm grateful to have contributed to it.