We are often quite selective in what we will and won’t read and in the process forget to ask ourselves what logic we are using in the first place to decide. Many go no further than a book title or the use of a particular word. Take for instance the Harry Potter series. Probably one of the best series written for children and youth in decades with primary themes of love, forgiveness, family, friendship etc. but due to the use of witch, wizard and magic as metaphorical vehicles to move the story and themes along a large segment of the population refuses to even consider reading them (to their own detriment I think).

 

Others feel it is their responsibility to tell people not to read certain things. Self-appointed censors of culture deeming it appropriate to judge the "average" person too impressionable to handle the horrors awaiting them between the covers of certain books. If you watch Pastor Mark Driscoll’s passionate rant against popular Christian book The Shack you will notice he goes so far as to tell his congregants "don’t read it". Basically saying "I’ve read it, I don’t like it, you can’t handle it". The level of arrogance and patronising is astounding.

 

We have forgotten that some of the greatest literary imaginations of our age were fed on the Brothers Grimm and other fairy tales that are filled with the stuff of life which includes death and tragedy. Our own Scriptures are loaded with stories of passion, violence, floods, famines, talking mules, ghosts, witches, demons,curses, the possessed, death, resurrection, healing and the end of the world – all of which we know to be God’s truth. Growing up I read the short stories and books of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen Donaldson, David Eddings, Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice and Piers Anthony. I was glued to t.v. shows like The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and The Outer Limits. When I was 12 I got a short wave radio that let me listen to American broadcasts of old horror and sci-fi radio plays at night. Everything was fuel for the imagination which (as Touchstone magazine once wrote) prepared me to accept the miraculous and wonderously impossible character of God and see the truth in the staggering things He has done, is doing and will do.

 

All of this as a huge preface to the fact that I am very excited about a new book by Neil Gaiman (likely a writer of modern fiction classics for both adults and children). The book, The Graveyard Book is the winner of the prestigious John Newbery Medal for children’s literature and tells the story of a young boy raised by ghosts in the graveyard after the death of his parents. Gaiman has been heavily influenced by fairy tales and might be considered a modern fairtale writer. His books have inspired movies such as Coraline. We have two children’s books by him – The Day I Traded My Dad for Two Goldfish, and The Wolves in the Walls.

 

If you get the book before I do let me know what you think of it.