Sarah Mackenzie (00:05):
Hey. Hey, Sarah Mackenzie here. This is episode 237, and I have one of my favorite authors here today. Sarah Arthur is the author of a dozen books for teens and adults, including the bestselling Walking with Frodo, A Devotional Journey through The Lord of the Rings. And after working 25 years with youth, she plays a killer game of Foursquare, but she says she refuses to eat cold pizza from a box ever, which is fair, right? She served as preliminary fiction judge for the Christianity Today Book Awards, was a founding board member of the annual C.S. Lewis Festival and co-directs the Madeleine L’Engle writing retreats. She’s a mom of sons, a writer, and of course, today’s highly esteemed guest here on the Read-Aloud Revival. Sarah, welcome back. You’ve been here before, I guess, in premium. I don’t think I’ve ever had you on the podcast yet, have I?
Sarah Arthur (01:00):
It’s just a thrill. I’m delighted. Yeah, I got to chat with parents who were reading through some books a few summers ago, but here we are.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:10):
Here we are. And I fell in love with your writing when I read A Light So Lovely. Which is, of course, the book you wrote about the spiritual legacy of Madeleine L’Engle. So good. I highly recommend. This is on my Mama book list to all of you out there, if you’re needing something good for yourself to read, I highly recommend it. And if you are a fan of Madeleine L’Engle, you love A Wrinkle in Time or A Circle of Quiet, or stories of the Austins or anything else by L’Engle. It’s a must read, so it’s one of my favorites. Then I heard you were writing a young adult fantasy and I was very excited. So how long did it take you? How long have you been working on Once a Queen is the title of the first in the series, right?
Sarah Arthur (01:50):
Yes. Yeah, Once a Queen. Oh, I had the idea for this book. I mean, fiction’s my first love. So stories are constantly in my head, even as I’m writing nonfiction. They’re the very intrusive thoughts in a good way. That’s 20 years ago, I remember eating dinner with my parents and being like, what do you guys think about this idea of a teenager, she’s an American, and she meets her British grandmother for the first time, and she can’t figure out why her parents have been estranged from this woman. And she begins to suspect that the fairytales she heard growing up or maybe true and that maybe her grandmother was involved in those fairytales. And of course, my parents were like, “That’s wonderful. You’re wonderful. Everything’s wonderful.” And let’s make a living doing this writing thing. Boom.
Sarah Mackenzie (02:46):
[inaudible 00:02:46] and, yeah.
Sarah Arthur (02:48):
[inaudible 00:02:47] and, yes. But super encouraging. And over the years I’ve just kind of chipped away at it in the middle of all the other books and all the other good stuff. It’s just always been there. So I had long last, at long last, I get to show her to the whole wide world.
Sarah Mackenzie (03:04):
That’s amazing. I had no idea you’d worked for so, or you had lived with her character and her possible story for so long, so it must feel like a, I mean, I’ll tell you. So I don’t really do blurbs anymore. I just can’t keep up with all the readings that I want to. But when your editor reached out or your publicist, I can’t remember who reached out and asked if I would blurb it, I was like, oh, Sarah Arthur wrote fantasy. Yeah, pass that on over. I’d like to read that, please.
Sarah Arthur (03:28):
When I saw the blurb, I was like, but she doesn’t, this is some other Sarah Mackenzie.
Sarah Mackenzie (03:34):
I was delighted to. I could not wait to read it. And then I immediately told my team here at Read-Aloud Revival, we have this team meeting, and I was like, okay, you all need to go get this book. Oh wait, you can’t get it yet because I have this advanced copy, but as soon as you can get it, you need to go get it, because I was so excited about it.
Sarah Arthur (03:50):
January 30th, 2024. It doesn’t feel like it’s coming soon enough, but I figured I’ve been in this for 20 years with this wonderful girl who’s my protagonist and her very complicated mother and grandmother, and I figured a few more months, but it is really hard to wait.
Sarah Mackenzie (04:06):
Yeah, I bet. Now, how many books will there be in the series, do you know?
Sarah Arthur (04:11):
We’re starting with three and yeah, so the first one, Once a Queen will be followed sometime in the year after that by Once a Castle followed by Once a Crown. But I also, of course, my brain works epically-
Sarah Mackenzie (04:29):
Like [inaudible 00:04:31].
Sarah Arthur (04:30):
So I told [inaudible 00:04:33], I’m like, “Will probably never feel like I’m ever done.” My poor children down the road will be like, “Oh, here’s more of mom’s notes and manuscripts.”
Sarah Mackenzie (04:44):
So much so, I always say my brain works in picture books. So even I’ve written a middle grade novel that when I went back and read it again, I was like, this would be better if it was just a picture book actually, but that’s my brain.
Sarah Arthur (04:55):
[inaudible 00:04:56].
Sarah Mackenzie (04:56):
So I love that you novel.
Sarah Arthur (04:56):
Yeah.
Sarah Mackenzie (04:59):
So I love that in your mind, you’re like, no, I think in epics I’m like, wow, that is not that. My brain doesn’t do that. That’s fabulous. I love it so much.
Sarah Arthur (05:06):
It’s a wonderful, it’s sort of a curse. Well, after I wrote Walking with Frodo, which also came out 20 years ago this fall, which I cannot believe.
Sarah Mackenzie (05:18):
Really?
Sarah Arthur (05:19):
I know. I had just finished up years in youth ministry. I had been in English major, so youth ministry was a really weird thing for me to be doing anyway after college. But it wedded some of my favorite things, which was teenagers and great stories, and also the fact that Tolkien had been a Christian, incredibly influential in C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity. It was the perfect wedding of all of those things. And so that book was a pure delight. But I read his letters, Tolkien’s letters, and one of my favorite things is when he said, “I have many first chapters.” And I was like, thank you. That is so affirming. I feel heard and seen now.
Sarah Mackenzie (06:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Oh my goodness.
Sarah Arthur (06:05):
Where to begin in this epic brain. Well, here’s the first chapter. No, and here’s another first chapter.
Sarah Mackenzie (06:11):
That’s so great.
Sarah Arthur (06:12):
Here’s another ancillary satellite stories, first chapter.
Sarah Mackenzie (06:17):
Okay. So in your story, you already hinted at this, we have a girl, an American girl, who starts to think that fairytales, the fairytales she’s always read and heard and loved. There might be some truth to it. I’d love to talk about fairytales with you. What’s the deal with fairytales? Why do we as humans love them so much?
Sarah Arthur (06:38):
Yeah, it’s kind of a perennial question because it’s ubiquitous across most cultures. I mean, they might have different versions of a folktale or mythologies, but it’s something at the heart of the human person that has this sort of unfulfilled longing to experience being maybe bigger than they are or to be someplace where they’re trespassing into the questions that kind of plague us all. Where are we from and why are we here? And at least in fairytales, you’re in fairyland where you didn’t set the rules, but they’re very clear and very arbitrary and when you’ve broken them. And so I think a lot of children just know that space. It’s like they didn’t invent the grownup world we live in where there’s all these expectations.
(07:40):
Here is the room you’re not allowed to be in. So it’s like we’re intrigued by that room and we want to know why we’re not allowed to be in there. So we go in there when no one’s looking and we trespass and we start to hunt. We’re just drawn to the mystery of the place we’re not allowed to be in. Unless you’re a rule follower, in which case you long for it, but you know better than to go in there. But the tales that-
Sarah Mackenzie (08:05):
So you pointed to yourself when you said that.
Sarah Arthur (08:07):
Yeah. Rule follower like me and my oldest child.
Sarah Mackenzie (08:11):
Oh, you are? Okay.
Sarah Arthur (08:12):
Yeah. And my son is obviously my oldest son. He just can’t handle stories about people breaking the rules. But a lot of times we are drawn to those stories because those characters are doing something we wouldn’t dare do ourselves. And what I love about some of the fairytale writers, also people of faith, is that the bedrock of those fairy stories is not built on shame or fear. It’s joy and hope. And so the rules that are set are not always just rules. So I think about, oh my gosh, I could go everywhere, but let’s talk about magical realism, like in The Secret Garden. We could go there. And that garden is locked off, but it really shouldn’t have been, right? We want to honor and celebrate this woman’s life, not forget about her.
Sarah Mackenzie (09:09):
Hide it away. Yeah,
Sarah Arthur (09:10):
Hide it away. So when you get into the secret garden, she’s trespassing, but there’s so much good that comes of that trespassing. So anyway, we could go on and on, but…
Sarah Mackenzie (09:22):
Yeah, so good. The way you were talking just now, it reminded me of a quote. So one quote, reminded me of two quotes. The first quote that I thought of was by G.K. Chesterton, where he says that in fairytales, “Apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember for one wild moment that they run with water.”
(09:48):
So often we think of fiction as escapism, like you escape. I mean, I think that’s the bad rap that, I mean, if you think of Anne Shirley at the beginning of the movie version of Anne of Green Gables, the [inaudible 00:10:02] version, she’s being criticized for reading because it’s like escaping into instead of taking care of your real life. There is another quote, and I’m looking to see if I had it here. I don’t see it, I thought I did in this one doc, but about how we’re not really escaping from, it’s more like we’re escaping to our lives. What’s true? And I think that’s that thing that Chesterton’s saying, you read a fairytale and you find out the river runs with wine and it makes you look at your own river again and go, isn’t it astonishing? That is astonishing that there’s a river running with water.
Sarah Arthur (10:37):
And C.S. Lewis talks about such stories re-enchanting the world for us. After you read about the Ents and the Lord of the Rings, you look at a tree differently and you want to be like, “Hello, are we sleeping? How is everything in there?” And there’s a way that the best fairytales send us back to the world with a new love and a new eyes for what we see instead of making us want to run from it. And that’s all over the place with Tolkien too. I don’t know if you’ve done much with the Tolkien reader or his essay On Fairy-Stories.
Sarah Mackenzie (11:12):
No. My oldest daughter was just reading that essay for a thesis she’s working on for her degree.
Sarah Arthur (11:17):
Nice.
Sarah Mackenzie (11:17):
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Arthur (11:20):
Well, one of my friends who has taught a class on Lewis and Tolkien says that Tolkien can take a very simple idea and make it super complex. And Lewis, by contrast, yes, Lewis takes a very complex idea and makes it super simple. So it’s not for the faint of heart, this essay he writes, but he says these really interesting things about it. That fairy stories were plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability, they awaken desire, satisfying it, while often wetting it, unbearably. I think about the Chronicles of Narnia, and you really want animals to talk. So you’re now kind of enchanted by any animal that you see, and it wakens you this desire to connect with creation differently, but it’s kind of an unbearable desire because you can’t, you’re looking at your cat and you’re like, please, please just tell me what’s going on in there, and it’ll never happen in this side of heaven. So it’s just a really interesting joy and longing and desire are so tied together.
Sarah Mackenzie (12:29):
Oh, that’s just beautiful, that joy and longing, which I think comes through in Once a Queen so powerfully because there is, your protagonist has this constant, this thread of longing for truth that’s truer than just someone telling her a fact. And I think that’s something that I feel like your work actually really explores well, which is that fiction can help us understand truth better oftentimes than facts, can convey truth about life in a way that feels, yeah-
Sarah Arthur (13:05):
Well, journalism doesn’t quite-
Sarah Mackenzie (13:08):
Exactly.
Sarah Arthur (13:09):
[inaudible 00:13:09] there, just stating all the facts.
Sarah Mackenzie (13:11):
Exactly.
Sarah Arthur (13:12):
Yeah. I mean, this is a huge theme for Madeleine L’Engle. I mean, she really believed that in things like fiction and in imaginative literature, you can get at truth or safe truth in ways that, this is language I’m using, not that she would use, but slip in the back door of the imagination while all of our usual resistance is at the front door of the house of our intellect, the back door we left open not thinking anything would slip in there. A great example would be my own husband. When I met him in college, we were at a Christian liberal arts school, and he, 19-year-old wasn’t sure he wanted to believe the faith that he had been given as a child. And I love theological debate as you’ve experienced with me before. So I was all in.
(14:14):
I was like, oh, yeah. It was like, this is so interesting and he’s so cute, and this is a really, let’s make the conversation lasts as long as possible. So at a certain point it was like, I think that your intellect is just tired. You’ve locked that door and it’s okay. And so I think you just need to read the Chronicles of Narnia, which he had never read, and it was while he was reading The Silver Chair that he had this moment where he was like, oh, I guess I can either be an existentialist, which is a very sad world. What hope is there that anyone can change? The world can be a better place, or I guess I could believe this stuff, even if I can’t see it right now, it’s puddle glum, stamping on the fire and be like, we’re going to go look for Narnia even if it doesn’t exist. And he just like, that was it. He’s now the pastor of a multi-campus church here in Lansing, Michigan.
Sarah Mackenzie (15:13):
Amazing.
Sarah Arthur (15:14):
And this is how story can work. I think about Jesus telling parables or many other cultures where the stories deliver. They show us the good life. They’re the ones that deliver unforgettably the vision of what is good and beautiful and true.
Sarah Mackenzie (15:36):
Well, pretty much every time someone asked Jesus a question, he responded with a story. I mean, he never responded with a lecture. It was story after story after story. Yeah. I found that Lewis quote too, “By putting bread, gold, horse, apple or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality, we rediscover it.”
Sarah Arthur (16:03):
Who was that?
Sarah Mackenzie (16:04):
That was Lewis.
Sarah Arthur (16:05):
That was Lewis, yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Mackenzie (16:07):
I didn’t make a note. I knew, I have this document where I keep all these fabulous quotes about why we read, and I didn’t write down where that came from, but maybe we can find it and put it in the show notes.
Sarah Arthur (16:16):
Yeah. Well, I pulled out, before we got on the podcast today, I pulled out both, I have it in the Tolkien reader, his essay On Fairy-Stories where he takes very simple ideas and makes them more complicated. Who is my contrast in? There’s a collection of essays called On Stories, And Other Essays-
Sarah Mackenzie (16:36):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (16:37):
And this is where we hear him. One of the essays is called Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said. It’s something about the form of the fairytale as this really pithy, concise, really clear plot, really clear, good and evil that delivers the truth that you’re wanting to express better than a lot of other forms. So he’s got that essay in there, and he is also, On Three Ways of Writing for Children is in here. It All Began with a Picture. I mean, there’s just a lot.
Sarah Mackenzie (17:15):
Which collection is that?
Sarah Arthur (17:17):
It’s called On Stories, And Other Essays.
Sarah Mackenzie (17:19):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (17:21):
It’s really interesting. He speaks about desire in that essay. That’s where truth being something that we’re longing for, but not just truth. We’re not just longing for facts. We’re longing for beauty and for goodness, which are all qualities at the heart of the divine. So the other thing that I find interesting about all the authors that we’re talking about is they didn’t think fairytales were just for children. Looking back hundreds of years ago, Grimm’s fairytales were not in fact for children. They were told by entire communities. And some of them, if you read them now, you’re like, that is so not appropriate for my five-year-old. And so Tolkien talks quite a lot about that in his essay too. Why have we relegated that just to children?
Sarah Mackenzie (18:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there’s of course that famous Lewis quote where he says, “A children’s story, which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children’s story.”
Sarah Arthur (18:20):
Madeleine says some similar things as well.
Sarah Mackenzie (18:24):
It’s so interesting because I find, my twins right now, they’re our youngest and they’re 10 and they’re very sensitive. I always think that’s not quite the right word, but that’s the closest word I can come up with. I’m careful about the stories that they read because they’re not able, there’s this beautiful part of The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom where she talks about how she had asked her father a grownup question and instead of answering her, “Do you know what this is?” He asked her to pick up as a young girl, “Okay, pick up this suitcase.” And it was full of heavy watch parts, I think or something, and she-
Sarah Arthur (19:02):
I love that analogy. I use it all the time.
Sarah Mackenzie (19:03):
She can’t pick it up. And she said, “I can’t. It’s too heavy.” And he said, “The same is true with knowledge. I would be a poor father if I asked you to carry all of the knowledge. Some of it you need to wait until you’re older and stronger enough to bear it.” So I think of that a lot with my twins because there’s a lot of stories that I’m like, they’re not ready yet to bear this. I don’t know why that’s different than it was for their older brother or for their sister who’s about the same age. But fairytales are different. There’s a different, they can handle a lot more scary fear in a fairytale than in another kind of a book. And so I think that’s partly too why they can transcend ages so much because as adults we’re still really interested in fairytales.
Sarah Arthur (19:47):
Well, and maybe some of that, I’m just extrapolating here from what you just said because I have two very different children and one of them is similar, but he can just absorb fairytales, no problem. And I wonder if some of it is the narrator voice to a fairytale is like that protective grownup who’s there making sure you’re going to be okay. It’s kind of a more omniscient voice, which is one of the reasons why I’m not sure fairytales always translate to film very well unless you have a narrator. Whereas in, for example, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy and Susan watch what happens to Aslan, but Lewis shields you from it a bit. He’s not going to let you see the moment when the knife comes all the way down. Whereas in the movie, the watchers of it are, we’re not shielded from that moment. And so I wonder if the narrator serves to give us a little distance and a little sense of being protected by a safe grownup.
Sarah Mackenzie (20:47):
Wow.
Sarah Arthur (20:50):
I’ll have to think more about that.
Sarah Mackenzie (20:51):
Me too. That’s so interesting. I had never thought of that. But you are right. When you’re reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you see it from a distance. It’s like it’s a way to experience it without having to stare at right in the face. Yeah. I think in our culture, in our time, it’s been true probably in modernity in general, that we value facts, empirical data, evidence above imagination and the creative forms. But I really want to make a case for imaginative stories. I feel like most of our listeners are reading aloud and they’re reading aloud all kinds of books with their kids. There’s this tendency, I think, for the world to keep telling us that there are some books that are more valuable than others. And it’s probably not Grimm’s fairytales if they’re telling you about that.
Sarah Arthur (21:40):
Despite their enduring presence.
Sarah Mackenzie (21:42):
Exactly. Exactly. So I sort of want to make a case for the importance of these fairytales and fairytale like stories that help us see the world with new eyes the way Lewis and Tolkien and L’Engle talk about fiction, letting you… I mean, if we think about what are most important charges, to love the Lord our God and to love others, and so we help our children love God and love others. And you said something earlier that echoed that whole idea from Lewis about how we rediscover. We are able to see the world with new eyes after we’ve read a book together.
Sarah Arthur (22:16):
Yeah, re-enchanted.
Sarah Mackenzie (22:18):
Yes, re-enchanted. I love that word so much, and it feels to me like, wow, isn’t this something we can do. Every time we break open a story with our kids, we help our kids become more enchanted with this world and the people that God filled it with.
Sarah Arthur (22:31):
Absolutely. Some of what we experience in a fairytale or in fiction is instead of being prescribed what we are supposed to know or accept, we are being invited. And I feel like that’s a very different experience for all of us.
Sarah Mackenzie (22:53):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (22:54):
I mean, it allows us some agency to step into the space at our own pace and the way we want and to experience things without being prescribed how we’re supposed to experience them or what we’re supposed to feel about them. I mean, I’ve been in youth ministry for so, so long and I could talk till I’m blue in the face about I could tell a kid, “Yeah, God created you and you’re special and God has a story and a plan for your life.” Or we could read The Silver Chair where Jill comes into Aslan’s country and she’s like, “Why are we here?” And realizes, “Oh, we were calling your name. Are you the one whose name we were calling?” And Aslan says, “You would not have been calling to me unless I had been calling to you.” So what am I going to begin with in my junior high Sunday school class? Am I going to begin with doctrine to get that across, or am I going to begin with The Silver Chair? So now we’ve done all the things, but we began from a very different place that’s unforgettable, like a parable.
Sarah Mackenzie (24:08):
Yes. Which I think is a big problem I see with a lot of stories that seek to preach or seek to, we see this a lot in picture books, but I actually think we could see it a lot in novels as well.
Sarah Arthur (24:21):
In young adult as a genre with its concern for issues?
Sarah Mackenzie (24:24):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (24:25):
We can often be hit over the head with-
Sarah Mackenzie (24:28):
And that’s the opposite of an invitation. I think that’s the key word that you use there. Is story as an invitation. I’m even just thinking, and this is not even, obviously this is not a fairytale. I’m thinking about Little Women. I just saw my son, oh my goodness, so cute. I went and visited my 18-year-old son who’s a freshman in university this last weekend, and he took me, he said, “Mom, I’d really like to take you to Little Women tonight.” Yes, please. I mean, hello.
Sarah Arthur (24:50):
I think your work as a parent has done, you can just retire now.
Sarah Mackenzie (24:55):
I had to call my husband. I’m like, ‘He took me to Little Women and he wanted to talk about it after.” So sweet. But one of the things I was thinking about is that when I read Little Women for the first time as a young woman, I definitely was reading from Jo’s perspective. That was definitely where I was. And that’s still true to some degree, obviously. I think that’s true because she’s really the main character, the protagonist. But also, I didn’t relate with Marmee on any level when I was 20, but now at 42, I’m like, I need a little more Marmee here. You come to it, you’re a different person every time you read it, which is why Little Red Riding Hood when I was a young girl, I read it differently than I read it now because different people, we have different experiences. And our kids, that’s true too. If they read it when they’re eight and then they read it when they’re 10, they’re a different person now.
Sarah Arthur (25:50):
Well, and that’s the perennial beauty of a lot of these stories is that they don’t lose their luster, they come to us in different ways as we age and we experience them differently. And again, it’s that invitation. I mean, if it was just a prescription, here’s the meds you have to take, it would just be medication. We would just take it in and it’d be the same when I was 10 as when I’m 20. I’ve built up some kind of weird immunity to it, which can actually happen with facts, but when it comes to an invitation, you’re just, oh, yes, that’s the warmth and the human of being a person with our own desires and interests and loves. And you might connect with one character in a story and a friend is going to connect with a different one. But then when you get together 20 years later, be like, have you read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice lately? Might have a different character-
Sarah Mackenzie (26:47):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (26:48):
C.S. Lewis, by the way, read that book every year.
Sarah Mackenzie (26:51):
I did not know that. Really?
Sarah Arthur (26:53):
Yeah. Well, you can see it in the way he does dialogue because she is so strong in dialogue in that book.
Sarah Mackenzie (26:59):
Oh, how interesting. I’m going to have to look for that. That’s so cool. Okay. I wonder if you have a favorite whimsical or quirky character from fantasy literature. Someone that you’re like, oh, this is a character who might not be the hero, but is kind of quirky or whimsical or surprising in some way that you really love.
Sarah Arthur (27:24):
Oh, I saw this question when you sent it to me, and I’ve been thinking ever since because it’s really hard to narrow it down.
Sarah Mackenzie (27:30):
I know. Sorry.
Sarah Arthur (27:30):
I have so many, but I out of love for my husband and sons, I’m going to choose Reepicheep from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, because he’s so marvelous. I just love that mouse, ridiculously. I have designed that mouse as Christmas ornaments. I’ve drawn him. Just to put the word valiant and mouse together. And then you see that sort of reiterated in things like The Tale of Despereaux.
Sarah Mackenzie (28:04):
Yeah, I was just going to say that. That’s funny. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Arthur (28:07):
And I hate mice in real life. They freak me out, but in a story, they’re fine. I even have this cute little decal that I found online of, it’s a sticker I put on way down at the base of my baseboard. It’s like a little hole. It looks like a mouse hole with a mouse in it reading by candlelight.
Sarah Mackenzie (28:25):
The best. I’ll tell you, I have, let me see if I have them right here. I think I do. My oldest or no, my second-oldest daughter is an art student now at university, but when she was in high school, she even made me, I’ll hold these up. They won’t be able to see these on the podcast, but you can see them all these little different mice in outfits and different forms.
Sarah Arthur (28:48):
Oh my gosh, that is-
Sarah Mackenzie (28:49):
Because I love storybook mice so much and she thought this would help me brainstorm story.
Sarah Arthur (28:54):
Oh my goodness. That is just delightful.
Sarah Mackenzie (28:55):
Yeah.
Sarah Arthur (28:59):
I mean Reepicheep, so he doesn’t just play, he’s not just like comic relief or just like a clever invention of Lewis’s mind. He plays a really important role with Eustace, in Eustace conversion, if you will, from being just a really miserable human being to actually being able to practice empathy. And some of that is because Reepicheep, as Eustace was not feeling well at one point, is just telling him stories. He tells him stories. And of course, Eustace had only ever read books of information. So he doesn’t know any of these tales. But that’s how we experience the virtues as living things, not just as these disconnected ideals. We see them embodied in various character forms that are really hard to forget.
Sarah Mackenzie (29:50):
That really rings true with one of my favorites, which I was thinking about this and I was like, you know who I really love as a quirky character is Worvil from Jennifer Trafton’s middle grade fantasy, the rise and fall of Mount Majestic. I don’t know, have you ever read this?
Sarah Arthur (30:07):
I need to read this book. It sounds marvelous.
Sarah Mackenzie (30:11):
You totally need to read this book. It’s fabulous. It’s a fabulous read aloud. This is so Worvil’s a worrier, and I pulled out one of the best quotes, I had to go look it up again. It’s been a few years since I’ve read this with my kids. But Worvil, he worries about everything and he hates the word might, and this is what he says, “Of all the words that have ever been invented, that is the worst. All of the terror in the world hangs on the word might. The leaf eaters might kidnap me and keep me locked up underground forever. They might tie me to a tree and leave me to be eaten by poison tongued jumping tortoises. A hurricane might flood the willow woods and both of us drown.”
(30:49):
“Well, said Persimmony, there certainly isn’t much chance of that happening. The sun is shining and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
(30:57):
“But it might. Anything might happen.”
(30:59):
“Right, you might find your house again and live happily ever after.”
(31:05):
“But I might not.”
(31:06):
“Persimmony stared at Worvil and discovered that she liked him. He was a coward certainly, but he had imagination and she liked people with imagination.”
(31:19):
Isn’t that fabulous?
Sarah Arthur (31:21):
So affirming of those of us with very creative anxiety.
Sarah Mackenzie (31:26):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (31:27):
Or can imagine all the worst case scenarios, that ability being a good thing. I’ve never really thought about that, but sure.
Sarah Mackenzie (31:34):
Yeah.
Sarah Arthur (31:35):
There we go.
Sarah Mackenzie (31:36):
It’s worry. When I think of worry, I think of Worvil embodied as anxiety or embodied as that tendency that some of us have us have more than others. I think of naming all my husbands, can instantly think of all the things that could go wrong with something. And there’s somebody like me who has a complete blind spots for all the things that could go wrong. So we need a little bit of Worvil in us.
Sarah Arthur (31:57):
Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Oh, that’s so great. Oh, I will be looking up that book for sure.
Sarah Mackenzie (32:02):
Yeah, it’s a fun one. One of the things that I really want to emphasize this year on the podcast, and we’ve talked about this some before, but really this year, I want to put a lot of attention on it, is that especially for world-weary mamas, we have so much on our plates. We carry so much of responsibility with our children and our families and our homes and our lives, our careers. Reading is a way to be nurtured. I think oftentimes we will set goals. I want to read this many books this year, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes we inadvertently make reading another thing we should be doing, and we feel like, we let it feel guilty, like, oh, I want to nurture my reading life, but I am struggling with it. And I wonder about this invitation to be nurtured by our reading life instead of feeling like it’s another thing to tend because we do a lot of nurturing. So yeah, it feels to me like our reading life could nurture us, nourish and replenish us in a different way than most other parts of our life.
Sarah Arthur (33:01):
It’s similar to how we were speaking about story in the sense that it can deliver truth in different ways than just pure facts or journalism can, I mean those again, it’s like is reading going to be just medicine that you have to take or is it going to be an invitation? I think about right here on my shelf is this little miniature room, and I started to see these online where there were these little rooms that had miniatures in them with fairy lights. And you put it on your bookshelf and it just sits there and it’s like this little world.
(33:35):
And I was so enchanted by that and so broke and couldn’t get one, that one night I pulled out a box of my old dollhouse furniture and then found a cardboard box the right size, and I fashioned the box into a room and it’s my own little writing studio and it’s got a fireplace in it and books aligning the fireplace, and it’s got a desk and a little mug with the last name Arthur on it that my father-in-law gave me years ago. He knows I like miniatures and I fit it all out with fairy lights and wallpaper and rugs and-
Sarah Mackenzie (34:09):
It’s so darling.
Sarah Arthur (34:10):
To me it’s like, this is my reminder. This is the invitation. This is what books are for. They’re inviting us in. This would be a very different feeling to my bookshelf if I had all these wonderful books and just bottles of medicine.
Sarah Mackenzie (34:26):
Yes, that’s right. Yes.
Sarah Arthur (34:27):
This is a world where I’d be invited into that is here for us, and it’s really here whenever we need it. Right. Books don’t go away. They’re always here. And they’re not just comforting, but they also enrich us by also challenging us. I don’t want to just say that that’s valuable, but it’s a kind of beauty that we don’t get in any other way. There’s truth out there. There’s goodness out there, but there’s also beauty.
Sarah Mackenzie (34:59):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s for its own sake.
Sarah Arthur (35:01):
For its own sake. And it can come in different forms. I mean, how many of us have zillions of chores? I have so many chores, and those are when I get out Hoopla or my Libby app, and I put my earbuds in and I listen to audiobooks.
Sarah Mackenzie (35:15):
Yeah. Take me away while I do this. Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Arthur (35:18):
And all of a sudden that chore is done and I’m like, oh, shoot, I’m not-
Sarah Mackenzie (35:21):
Yeah, let me find another chore because yeah, when I’m like, what else can I do? And I’m like, oh, there’s always something else to do.
Sarah Arthur (35:29):
Always something else. And one other thing I think about is that this was a challenge for us when our kids were really little. Tom and I, we were 13 years before we had kids, so we had built in habits of prayer together in the evenings, and it was usually from the Book of Common Prayer or some other kind of structure so that by the end of the day, we weren’t inventing things from scratch that we didn’t have the energy to invent. And when you have little kids, there’s no way, you’re not going to be doing [inaudible 00:36:00] for the day and compliment and like no. We had to realize that sitting down and reading their children’s bible with them was in fact evening prayer. It was still for us, still nurturing us. So reading stories with our children is still us reading stories. It’s still for us.
Sarah Mackenzie (36:18):
So that reminds me of Sally Lloyd-Jones’s, Jesus Storybook Bible, which a lot of us know and I have for my younger kids, but she also has a collection called The Story of God’s Love for You. And it’s really just basically the Jesus Storybook Bible without the illustrations. The audiobook version is beautifully narrated, and what surprises me about it is if you compare it to the text of Jesus Storybook Bible, it’s almost identical. And yet, yeah, it does not feel like it’s for children. It’s for you.
Sarah Arthur (36:49):
Yes, it’s for you. Madeleine L’Engle often talked about how she’s like, I’m still, all the ages I’ve ever been that 12-year-old is still in us. The 20-year-old is still in us. We still respond to those things, we can anyway with the openness of a child. And that childlikeness is not a weakness. It’s not something to grow out of.
Sarah Mackenzie (37:16):
What are some books that you feel have nurtured you or been like that beauty for its own sake or just feel like life giving to you over the years?
Sarah Arthur (37:25):
Oh my goodness.
Sarah Mackenzie (37:27):
What a question.
Sarah Arthur (37:27):
So many. I know. So many. Well, one of my fun jobs that you mentioned with my bio was I’m the preliminary fiction judge for the Christianity Today Book Awards. And so I get just tons of books come across my path every year, and I sift through them and figure out which ones I’m going to pass on to the final judges. I get to only pick four, which some years are easier than others. But as in my role as preliminary fiction judge for the Christianity Today Book Awards, I come across so many books in a year and I sift through them and I have to kind of figure out which ones are going to be passed along to the four final judges and four books to four final judges. And I’ve been lately enchanted by stories with really strong women protagonists who have made a really unlikely choice. So this year, one of the books I read was Claire Gilbert’s, I, Julian-
Sarah Mackenzie (38:27):
I know this book.
Sarah Arthur (38:28):
Which is about Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich, she was a 13th century anchorite, so she had become, it’s kind of like a nun, but she becomes connected to a specific church and works strictly out of that community, but is literally bricked up inside her own little living space attached to the church. People come to her for advice, but before that, I didn’t know that she was married and she lost her husband and precious wonderful daughter in one of the many plagues.
Sarah Mackenzie (39:04):
I didn’t know.
Sarah Arthur (39:05):
It is heart shattering and beautiful, just a absolutely enchanting story and really hard. It’s written from her perspective.
Sarah Mackenzie (39:15):
Yeah, it’s written like a fictional autobiography is how it’s described.
Sarah Arthur (39:19):
It helps to be familiar though with her Revelations of Divine Love, which was super controversial at the time, and you learn more about that through the book. But I just find women who have gone through tremendous loss and have sort of moved into a different kind of way of being often tied to faith has really been amazing to me. And I have so many author friends who are incredible. I mentioned to you earlier, my friend Sophfronia Scott wrote a book called Wild, Beautiful, and Free, which is about an enslaved woman who is able to escape from slavery right at the beginning of the Civil War. And she’ll talk about how she really wanted to not use the usual trope of the enslaved person escaping and having to run through the woods and dogs and all that. It’s just a super clever way that this young woman escapes and it’s very empowering and gives her a lot of agency. Sophfronia’s writing is just beautiful. We co-direct the Madeleine L’Engle Writing Retreats together.
Sarah Mackenzie (40:22):
Oh, excellent. Okay. We’re going to put both of these books in the show notes, and as we’re talking here, I’m sending I, Julian to Courtney, who’s our community manager here at Read-Aloud Revival, because this is right up her alley. She’s going to-
Sarah Arthur (40:35):
Yes. Oh, I love that.
Sarah Mackenzie (40:37):
Here’s a fun question for you. If you could step into the world of any fairytale for the day, one day, which one would you choose and why?
Sarah Arthur (40:45):
Oh my goodness. Part of me. I wish I could see the Lord of the Rings, but I feel like it’d be very lonely. There aren’t a lot of women.
Sarah Mackenzie (40:54):
It’s true. Yeah.
Sarah Arthur (40:56):
One figure prominently. I mean, there’s a giant spider, there’s an elf queen. I mean, I feel like I could traverse that world and enjoy it a lot. Oh my gosh. Well, this is magical realism, but I would love to go to the house of a Secret Garden.
Sarah Mackenzie (41:20):
Oh, okay.
Sarah Arthur (41:22):
It’s just this barren moor landscape, and I kind of feel like it’s probably grimmer than we know it to be, which is what makes the blooming of that garden so much more sort of magical. I want to wander that house. I want to find Collin’s secret passageway. It’s just all the things. All the things really. Any big house like that. The Richleighs of Tantamount by Barbara Willard.
Sarah Mackenzie (41:52):
Say it again, sorry. The rich what?
Sarah Arthur (41:54):
The Richleighs of Tantamount by Barbara Willard is another big house with lots of secrets, like a [inaudible 00:42:03] Castle story. That’s another one. Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse.
Sarah Mackenzie (42:08):
Oh yes. Okay.
Sarah Arthur (42:09):
Any of those. Somebody arrives at a house at night and then they wake up the next day and they explore everything. That’s my ideal story.
Sarah Mackenzie (42:15):
How interesting. Because now we should talk about Once a Queen, because boy, this sounds very [inaudible 00:42:19]-
Sarah Arthur (42:19):
Right?
Sarah Mackenzie (42:20):
There’s a little something going on here, Sarah.
Sarah Arthur (42:22):
She doesn’t arrive at night, but at the very beginning she arrives at [inaudible 00:42:26] College.
Sarah Mackenzie (42:26):
And she does wander at night a bit.
Sarah Arthur (42:28):
She does. She wanders.
Sarah Mackenzie (42:30):
Actually, that’s what I want to talk about next. So because when this podcast airs, Once a Queen will be releasing in just a couple of weeks, so you can pre-order the book now. Let me read back, the flap, the publisher’s flap for this so everyone can understand the kind of book this is. It’s a young adult fantasy. Perfect for older kids and teens. I loved it, loved it so much.
(42:52):
Here’s that cover copy. “When 14-year-old American Eva Joyce unexpectedly finds herself spending the summer at the mysterious manor house of the English grandmother she’s never met. She soon discovers that her family, the manner staff, and even the house itself, are hiding secrets. With odd things happening in the gardens at night, Eva embarks on a search for answers. Astonishingly, she learns that the Hull’s staff believe portals to other worlds exist, though hidden and steadily disappearing, and that Eva’s grandmother was once a queen in one of those worlds, but her grandmother’s heart is closed to the beauty and pain of the past. Now it’s up to discover what really happened and to decide if it’s possible that her favorite childhood fairytales are true. As she starts unraveling the dangerous secrets around the grandmother who is more than she appears, Eva begins to wonder if she too is more than she understood herself to be.”
(43:52):
That just, wow. I mean, I’ve read this book, I gobbled it up, I devoured it and immediately started recommending it to all of my favorite Lewis and L’Engle people. It just rung so true. And also, if you’re listening to this and you don’t have older kids in teens, this would be a, I mean, I’m telling you, I stayed up late reading this book, so read it yourself, you’ll love it.
Sarah Arthur (44:13):
Well, and we’re building our launch team here in Lansing, Michigan with local teens, and I have 12 and 13 year olds. I mean, it really does fit because Eva is 14. She fits that luminal space where you’ve begun to turn your face toward adulthood, but you’re not there yet. You’re still clinging to some of those things from childhood. And fairytales for her is one of those. She’s worried that she’s going to have to give up fairytales forever as she grows older, and that shouldn’t be the case. We should be able to enjoy them and read them all the way through, till we’re 90. I hope somebody is reading to me from The Secret Garden or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I’m in hospice care someday, because that would be my dream. That and some of my favorite Bible stories. That’s it. That’s what we-
Sarah Mackenzie (45:02):
That’s right. That’s what we have. We have the stories.
Sarah Arthur (45:05):
That’s what we have. Yeah.
Sarah Mackenzie (45:06):
What was the most surprising thing? Because this story you said lived inside you for decades, so what was the most surprising thing about writing it?
Sarah Arthur (45:14):
Oh, well, just how hard it is. I mean, I’ve written 12 nonfiction books starting with Walking with Frodo 20 years ago, and that voice, that strong essay voice or that’s just a really good voice for me. And so I really was battling poser syndrome while I was writing fiction because I feel like I want it to be a genius work. I don’t think it’s a genius work. I think it is a work that makes us think, and it’s not like I’m not going to be hyper original, but I am going to put us in a space where it feels somewhat familiar, but maybe pushes us a little bit into thinking differently about some things. And it’s those intergenerational relationships, as I was probing Eva’s relationships with her mother and her grandmother and their estrangement, the father actually was in the book originally.
Sarah Mackenzie (46:13):
Oh, really?
Sarah Arthur (46:14):
Yeah. He shows up a couple of times in the original story, in the original drafts, but I began to realize it wasn’t as much about, he was a supporting character and very encouraging and wonderful, my own dad and my own husband, but it wasn’t his story. It really needed to center on these women. And that kind of came as a surprise how complex their relationship felt and how difficult it was to render that in ways that were loving and didn’t make you want to hate everybody.
Sarah Mackenzie (46:47):
And it feels like that rings true too, because-
Sarah Arthur (46:50):
Actually the grandmother-
Sarah Mackenzie (46:51):
Yes.
Sarah Arthur (46:51):
There was real damage. And so how do you not hate her? How is she not Cruella de Vil by the 10th chapter?
Sarah Mackenzie (47:02):
Well, you do it. I can tell you, you do it, but it does feel complex. It doesn’t feel simplistic at all, which also rings true because our relationships with our mothers and grandmothers and our feminine relationships are really complex.
Sarah Arthur (47:15):
Yeah. Well, I wanted to push back on some of the classic fairytales that don’t render women with as much complexity or with the kind of complexity they deserve. I mean, again, it’s like Tolkien with no women in his books. Occasionally, C.S. Lewis even will treat them very lightly, like their sort of decisions of ultimate importance are kind of dismissed.
Sarah Mackenzie (47:41):
Susan, anyone?
Sarah Arthur (47:42):
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would love Jadis’s origin story. Why did she get into this terrible relationship with her sister? But I don’t blame him for that. It’s like fairytales can only do so much, but part of me writing this story is I am a woman, and so I have relationships that aren’t always expressed in other fairytales. So let’s go there. Let’s tease and probe, and if you push this thing, what happens?
Sarah Mackenzie (48:11):
Yeah, yeah. What’s behind that door if we, yeah.
Sarah Arthur (48:15):
What’s behind this door, down that hallway?
Sarah Mackenzie (48:18):
Well, I hope everybody pre-orders a copy. Hey, actually, because this episode is airing before the book comes out, I think you have some pre-order bonuses for people who order before they release date.
Sarah Arthur (48:29):
Oh, they’re so fun. I’m so excited. Yes. So if you go to my website and you click on the Once a Queen in the dropdown menu, it sends you to my publisher’s landing page for the book, and they are offering the first three chapters as a download when you pre-order, and we put together what we’re calling the Once a Queen Journal. It’s like a downloadable printable creativity journal that’s got quotes from the book, but also creativity prompts as you think about your own stuff that you want to invent. And some of my original sketches-
Sarah Mackenzie (49:05):
So cool.
Sarah Arthur (49:05):
… over years of characters and places that have inspired my thinking about the book. So I’m going to be doing a virtual book launch on January 30th and the night the book comes out, and so we can get our journals if we’ve printed them, we can get them out and assemble them.
Sarah Mackenzie (49:21):
Oh, fun.
Sarah Arthur (49:22):
One of the creativity prompts and my team, launch team from Lansing, some of them will be there to help host that.
Sarah Mackenzie (49:28):
So fun. Well, we’ll put a link to all of that in the show notes. We’ll put a link to where you can pre-order the book and to where you can get that journal and the chapters early so you can get a headstart on them. I would recommend this book for anybody who just wants a good story, anyone who wants to remind themselves as to why they love reading. It’s the kind of book that will nurture you, and especially if you have kids, I’d say 12 and up especially are going to be really resonating with it. So highly recommended. Sarah Arthur, I love, love, love chatting with you. Every time I talk to you, I think, okay, well how can I get her back next week? This happened last time too.
Sarah Arthur (50:04):
How can we keep this going? It’s such a joy. It’s so amazing to find a community that is nurturing the imagination of young people and families. And that is my heart, that’s my ministry. So it’s a joy to be with you all.
Sarah Mackenzie (50:17):
Thank you so much. Now let’s go hear what the kids are reading and loving most these days.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
My name is [inaudible 00:50:30] and I’m six years old. I’m from Texas and I like Harry Potter because I like how they’re very brave and they know it’s all about friendship.
Ollie (50:50):
My name’s Ollie and I’m four, and my favorite book is Harry Potter because they’re brave.
Avery (50:56):
Hello, my name is Avery. I live in Fort Stewart, Georgia. I’m five. My favorite book is Zoey and Sassafras. And the part I like about it mostly is it’s all about science.
Jonathan (51:06):
Hi, my name is Jonathan.
Speaker 7 (51:06):
Where do you live?
Jonathan (51:06):
In Fort Stewart, Georgia and-
Speaker 7 (51:20):
How old are you?
Jonathan (51:20):
Three. I like Mercy Watson Watson driving [inaudible 00:51:27].
Anna (51:28):
Hi, my name is Anna and I’m four. And [inaudible 00:51:34]. My name is Anna and my favorite book is Heidi and the Fox because Heidi was very brave and she ran away to the nearby tree, and that’s why I like it because she was very, very brave.
Speaker 9 (51:53):
That’s right.
Anna (51:53):
Yay for Heidi.
Speaker 10 (51:53):
My name is [inaudible 00:51:59].
Speaker 11 (51:53):
How old are you?
Cuan (51:53):
My name is Cuan. I got a [inaudible 00:52:05] for Christmas.
Speaker 11 (52:08):
And what’s your favorite book?
Cuan (52:11):
Corduroy and Cock-A-Doodle Doo Hullabaloo
Speaker 11 (52:15):
The Cock-A-Doodle Doo! Barnyard Hullabaloo.
Cuan (52:17):
Yeah, and Corduroy.
Speaker 11 (52:19):
And Corduroy. Why do you like those books?
Cuan (52:21):
Because they are good.
Speaker 11 (52:23):
Because they are good.
Jameson (52:26):
Hi, my name is Jameson and I’m from Canterbury, New Hampshire, and I’m 10 years old and my favorite book series is The Wild Robot because it’s exciting and funny and I can’t wait for the next book to come out and it’s coming out in September. Bye.
Millie (52:44):
I’m Millie from Nebraska. I’m 11 and a half years old. I like the book, the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. And one of my favorite parts is when they’re describing the Demons of Compromise because one is tall and skinny, one is short and fat, and the other is just like the other two.
William (53:07):
I’m William from Nebraska. I’m nine years old and I recommending the book because of Winn-Dixie. It’s about what a dog finds the owner, and when the owner talks to the dog, it feels like the dog actually listening.
Leaf (53:29):
Hey, my name is Leaf and I’m six years old and I’m from New Hampshire. And my favorite book, but it’s actually a book series, is The Chronicles of Narnia, and I like that series because that it comes with new place. Bye.
Sarah Mackenzie (53:58):
Thank you so much, kids. Okay. Wasn’t that a great conversation with Sarah Arthur? I knew I had to have her on the show. I’m telling you, I drank that book right up and immediately started recommending it to people I knew would love it. Show notes for this episode [email protected] slash 2 3 7 because this is episode 2 37. You can find the book there. All the goodies we’ve talked about, all the books and stories that we mentioned and there were quite a few. Those will all be in the show notes as well. Kids, thanks again for your messages. I love hearing what you are reading and loving lately. And let’s see. I guess I’ll just be back here in two weeks, but for now, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
