The WingFeather Saga
You may not know that my favorite kind of books or stories are the ones written partly for children or maybe it is “the young at heart!” JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and JK Rowling. I was about to start re-reading Tolkien (the most difficult of the above) when through the sharing of friends in the Goodreads club/blog I discovered The WingFeather Saga (link to author’s description of the books). They are children’s books in this general fantasy/adventure style of the above three mentioned authors, with it quickly obvious that the author, Andrew Peterson, admires CS Lewis the most and would like to create a Narnia.
My Review of Sorts . . .
Peterson is a gospel music recording artist in Nashville where I lived for 37 years and never heard of him during that time! 🙂 And he wrote all 4 books in the series before I moved to Costa Rica in 2014 (books written 2008-2014) trying to capture the magic, fantasy, adventure and subtle Christian messages that Lewis did in The Chronicles of Narnia. Well, I have now read 3 of the 4 books and just started the fourth book. In the first book I thought he was a cheap imitation of Lewis, but his writing kept getting better as he moved along until now I love it and can hardly wait to see how he concludes the series in 95 chapters of Book 4!
They are loosely billed as “Christian” fantasy/adventure stories. Without the deep symbolism of Lewis, he regularly refers to God as “The Maker” and as the stories progress praying to The Maker more frequently. Three children of a dethroned king live with their mother and grandfather to begin their adventures of discovery in danger in a makebelieve land. There is a strong undercurrent thread or story line for the two boys, Janner & Tinker/Kalmar about dealing with their mistakes in life and meeting the unexpected problems or evils that come upon all of us at times. In the first three books there is less of that life-weakness and gritty challenges for their sister Leeli, though some. There are lots of good discussion possibilities for the families who read books to their mixed-ages of children which the series encourages.
Having lived in Nashville, I’m surprised that I’m just now learning about this series, but it seems to just now be catching on big and of course they are milking it financially with some “related” books and now an animated series of all four books being planned. I recommend these to people of all ages who love fantasy/adventure stories and especially for older Elementary School through Middle School kids and older, or for family reading!
For those who follow me on Goodreads you will know that I recently started another book on my Kindle, The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr.. who recently died and this book was highly praised and won some awards. It is a modern Christian spinoff of some of the beast tales in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I’ve read 7 chapters and not impressed yet, though I like the characters. So not sure how much I will read before giving up on it. My plan was to read it before starting the above Book 4 of Wingfeather Saga, but decided to go back to what I enjoy reading. 🙂
“One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Charlie, I still read the Hardy Boys books from my childhood. Finally completed a collection of all the blue backed books, although the old brown backed ones were the copies I originally read.
Charles, How delightful! Another one of my favorite series of books I read in around Grades 5 through 9 or so. When I traveled in my work I would sometimes listen to audio books from the Hardy Boys series that I did not remember reading as a boy. But don’t think I completed all of the books. I’ll have to see if they’re on Kindle! 🙂
It is always good too hear from you Charles! If you ever read any of the Wingfeather Saga books, I would love to hear your evaluation.