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Rootless, by Taylor Everett Brown | Little Book, Big Story

Interview with Author Taylor Everett Brown

Taylor Everett Brown’s book Rootless is an adventure story set in the fictional (and fantastic!) realm of Pateramor. He kindly answered some questions for us so we can learn more about the story behind Rootless and about him, the author behind the story.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure, I’m a giant nerd who aspires to great adventures, fantastic romance, and saintly holiness. And, every once in a while, I come close to reaching those aspirations.

For example, I once managed to pluck a diamond out of the glittering, salty sea-spray of the Texas coast. Realizing the miraculous nature of what had taken place, I dropped to a knee and proposed to my (now) wife, stunning her just long enough to secure a “yes” and sweep her off her feet!

Since then we have set about the serious(ly fun) business of building a home and filling it with amazing children.

And on a related note, I am certain that I am called to the vocation of fatherhood because I have been telling dad-jokes my entire life.

What inspired you to write Rootless?

I’ve always enjoyed faerie tale stories, whether they came in books, video games, or songs. And, as faerie tales tend to do, they inspired my own musings on the origins of magical worlds, fantastical beasts, and wonderful peoples.

I started capturing those ideas and writing them down while I was in college and, after more than a decade, they had grown into a living breathing world. I knew it was special and I wanted to do something with it. I just lacked the resolve and the focus. Then my son, Everett, came along and provided the spark I needed to write my first story in the world of Pateramor.

I thought it would be so much fun to write a little bedtime story, starring my son, that I could read to him throughout his childhood. Well, the bedtime story turned into a series of bedtime stories and, finally, into the full novel, Rootless. I was so happy with it, I decided to publish it.

I loved reading about the different forests of Pateramor. Which part of Pateramor would you most like to visit?

It makes me so happy to hear you say you loved reading about the forests. I wanted the forests to be like characters in the book, each with their own personality, feel, and quirks. I really enjoyed writing about them.

Rootless takes place in the Kingdom of Windfall, which is only one small part of the world of Pateramor. But even just in Windfall, there are so many places I would like to visit. From the serenity and solitude of the Singing Mountains to the hand-made grandeur of Fortuna to the other-worldly beauty of the glowing forest. It’s hard to choose!

But, for me, I think the dragon forest edges out the rest of the destinations. I just love dragonapple trees. Everything about them, from their warmth, to their giant fruit, to the ecosystem they create is intriguing.

And, between you and me, I will admit that I designed the dragonapples to really appeal to someone with my taste buds. That mixture of sweet and spicy is something that I relish. I would love to try one.

Of course, what really seals the deal is the dragons. Who doesn’t want to see dragons? Especially dragons as exhilarating and as beautiful as phytodrakes?

What are some of your favorite books? Which ones particularly fuel your writing?

I recently read Augustine’s Confessions and it is incredible! It reads as easily as a modern novel and the troubles he deals with in his life are so easy to relate to . . . and yet it was written 1600 years ago!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas is one of my all-time favorite books. It’s thrilling and inspiring from beginning to end, which is saying something given how much story it packs between its covers.

I also really enjoy reading anything by C.S. Lewis. One gem of his that not many talk about is Perelandra from his sci-fi trilogy. C.S. Lewis is so good at speaking about evil and there’s a scene in the second book where he explores what it was like when Eve was tempted in Eden. It is deliciously terrifying!

But in the end, J.R.R. Tolkien is still my favorite. When I need to get inspired to write I reach for him. The completeness of his world, the beauty of his language, and the sheer size of his story, you just can’t beat it. I can re-read his books over and over and I am always in awe.

Can we look forward to any new books from you?

You know, I do have a second son now, Augustine Michael Brown. And it would be a shame for him to grow up hearing and reading about his brother going on faerie tale journeys and not have any himself.

Yes! I am thrilled to announce that I have begun writing a second story in the world of Pateramor! I’m aiming to complete it before the end of the year. So stay tuned!

Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

Always! If you want to know more about the me, the books, or the world of Pateramor, I encourage you to go and explore Pateramor.com. I’m slowly building up a treasure trove of information on that website to fill in the blanks between the books.

For example, right now there’s a great article on the race of little inventors called the Munchkins (to which readers were introduced in Rootless). And I hope to soon publish an article on their “superior” brand of technology called “munchkintech”.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

May 19, 2017 / 0 Comments

Featured Author: Sally Lloyd-Jones

It’s been over two years since I shared a featured author with you, I know. But today is the day: I’m bringing the series back!

When I choose books to review on this blog, I find that there are some authors who have won my heart so thoroughly that I can’t decide which of their books to review first. These are the authors that I love for themselves, not for any single book, and whose name on the spine of an otherwise unknown volume is enough insurance for me to buy a copy without even peeking at the blurb on the back of the book. Introducing you to them is my way of saying, “Yes, we’ll get to the specific titles. But for now, just skip to the part where you read any book they have ever written.”

Today’s author is a contemporary one, and one you’re familiar with if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Sally Lloyd-Jones.

One of the first picture books that I acquired as a parent, one of the first ones that showed me how beautiful Bible stories for children can be, was The Jesus Storybook Bible. We lived in an old corner store then—a meat market actually—that had been converted into an odd, stucco, square-shaped home, perfect for our family of three. The back quarter of the house had cork-lined walls left over from its days as a meat locker, and the front had windows that started near my knees and reached nearly to the top of the very tall room. I loved those windows. I loved sitting in front of them in the spring, watching the neighborhood dogs saunter past, and the cherry trees outside trumpet the season’s change. I loved sitting in front of them, with eighteen-month-old Lydia on my lap, and reading to her from The Jesus Storybook Bible.

Sally Lloyd-Jones writes not simply for children but to them. Her books makes me feel, as a parent, like I am sitting in on a conversation she’s having directly with my child. I love and laugh with and am shaped by her words as well, but my involvement feels like an added bonus: her words speak right to my children with a warmth and understanding that reminds me at times of E. Nesbit’s writing.

Since that first copy of The Jesus Storybook Bible, we’ve made it a practice to purchase a new copy for each of our daughters around their second or third birthday (Phoebe just got hers). We do this mostly because we want each daughter to have her own childhood copy to carry with her into adulthood, but also because that’s usually about when the spine on our current copy begins to give way.

But The Jesus Storybook Bible is not the only book Lloyd-Jones has written, and it’s certainly not the only one I’ve reviewed here on Little Book, Big Story. Here are a few of our favorite books by Sally Lloyd-Jones:

Picture Books

– Baby Wren and the Great Gift (Illus. Jen Corace)

– How to Be a Baby, by Me the Big Sister (Illus. Sue Heap)

– How to Get a Job, by Me the Boss (Illus. Sue Heap)

– How to Get Married, by Me the Bride (Illus. Sue Heap)

– Skip to the Loo (Illus. Anita Jeram)

– Just Because You’re Mine (Illus. Frank Endersby)

– Found (Illus. Jago)

– Bunny’s First Spring (Illus. David MacPhail)

– Baby’s Hug-a-Bible (Illus. Claudine Gevry)

– Lift-the-Flap Bible (Illus. Tracey Moroney)

Not Quite Picture Books

– The Jesus Storybook Bible (Illus. Jago)

– Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing (Illus. Jago)

Christmas Books

– Song of the Stars (Illus. Allison Jay)

– Little One, We Knew You’d Come (Illus. Jackie Morris)

Also, if you want to know more about Sally Lloyd-Jones, or just want to be enchanted by her vision for life and writing, I highly recommend listening to her interview with Sarah MacKenzie on the Read-Aloud Revival

The ladies of Aslan’s Library interviewed her a while back, and that one’s lovely, too (Part 1 | Part 2).

And (how neat is this?) here is a video interview with Lloyd-Jones from Haven Today, celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Jesus Storybook Bible. Tell me: do you recognize any of the photos featured in it?

Eleazar and Rebekah Ruiz, authors of Golly's Folly | Little Book, Big Story

November 15, 2016 / 8 Comments

Interview with Eleazar and Rebekah Ruiz (Authors of Golly’s Folly)

Last week, I told you all about Golly’s Folly. This week, you get to hear from the authors themselves! We’re also giving away a copy to Golly’s Folly today (details on how to win are at the end of this post).

Dear Readers, let me introduce you to Eleazar and Bekah Ruiz—your new favorite kindred spirits:

Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Eleazar: I’m a graphic designer by day and a publisher/art director by night. My background as a graphic designer/art director has been helping, serving, and equipping churches to communicate effectively to their different audiences through the mediums of branding and design. Other clients include Microsoft, Xbox, Focus on the Family, Tooth & Nail Records, among others.

Bekah: I’m an educator at heart and just love to be around people in general. I’ve worked with elementary kids, middle schoolers, and college students. I’ve been working in higher education for 6 years now. I love DIY projects, coffee, and learning more about the publishing world with Ele.

Why do you think kids need to hear Golly’s story?

Eleazar: I think people including myself have the tendency to intentionally and unintentionally seek happiness, contentment, and fulfillment in all the wrong places. Some people turn to finding fulfillment in relationships, others in money, and some simply find their meaning in what they do 40-60 hours a week.

I believe that is our natural bent and it starts at a young age. I personally realized it in my twenties. I realized that everything I had worked for up until that point in time and everything I’d accomplished had been done in hopes to satisfy me or fulfill me. At one point I expected my wife to be the person to “complete” me (like Jerry Maguire would say). Other times I sought that satisfaction in my job or in people’s perception of me.

Golly’s Folly is simply our way of giving kids a heads up about this tendency. At some point they will unconsciously expect things like the ones I mentioned to satisfy them. We are here to say, from a Christian worldview, that the only place such satisfaction can be found is through a loving relationship with our loving father, God.

Bekah: I believe kids have brilliant minds, and are so capable of taking in this message. We often underestimate them. When everyone in their classrooms and everything in the media is telling them to “get this” and “buy that,” we want them to hear that seeking things first will not give them the satisfaction in their hearts that Jesus can.

I would love to hear more about your publishing company, Patrol Books. What is your vision for the company?

Eleazar: At Patrol Books, we are trying to raise the expectation people have about Christian art. Have you ever been to the theater and stared at all the movie posters for upcoming movies? And then noticed one of those posters had a religious bent? Once you perceive that, you think to yourself, “Nah … I’ll pass.”

Recently we’ve visited several bookstores due to our latest book release and have found the same is true in the children’s religious section at those bookstores. Those shelves have been either half full or filled with poorly executed content. No wonder people don’t expect much of Christian art! We believe it is our (Christians’) responsibility to change that perception.

Bekah: The selection [of excellent Christian children’s literature] is kind of sad, really. In “religion and social issues” within the children’s section at bookstores, we found a slew of books on potty training, learning manners, pregnancy (new sibling), one or two children’s bibles, a handful of Islamic writings, and that was it.

Patrol Books exists to create content that is both orthodox in its theology and surprisingly beautiful in its content. We are here to raise the bar. And we are tasking ourselves with literature to start.

Golly’s Folly is beautiful, both in the illustrations and in the way it actually feels as a book. It’s clear that the physical presentation of the book matters a lot at Patrol Books. Why do you think it’s important for a book to be beautiful and well-written?

Eleazar: We believe beauty and sound theology should be inseparable simply because the epicenter of Christian theology is God himself. A God who proves his care for beauty in multiple instances in the Bible. Starting in Genesis with the creation of Eden, then again in the building of his temple in Exodus 31, and ultimately bleeding over all the way to the book of Revelation where the heavens, the place of God’s throne, are described. God often uses the beauty aesthetic to communicate something about himself in the same way he uses the ugly aesthetics to describe sin. To quote Dr. John Piper [Bible scholar, teacher, theologian], “Nothing ugly is ever called glorious in the Bible.”

What’s next for you as authors?

Eleazar: Most of our time is currently focused on making sure Patrol Books succeeds as a business and in the midst of that we’ll be working on the second book of the Golly’s Folly series for which we already have a title!

What’s next for Patrol Books?

Eleazar: There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon for Patrol Books. In the next year people should expect us to release two or three more books from other authors. But we are trying our hardest to not make you all wait until next year! This holiday season could be a particularly exciting time for us at Patrol Books, so please stay tuned!

Enter to Win a copy of Golly’s Folly

To enter, fill in as many options as you like in the widget below. The giveaway closes on Friday, Nov. 18. After that, a winner will be randomly selected and notified by email. Best of luck to you all!

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October 24, 2014 / 0 Comments

Featured Author: CS Lewis

Today’s featured author is one who looms large in the recent history of Christian thought. He is one that you’ve doubtless encountered and may already love, but the thought that you may not have gone further into his work than The Chronicles of Narnia finally motivated me to put pen to paper and draft this post. Perhaps I’m reminding you of an old friend. Perhaps. But I hope that, for some of you, this post serves as a welcome introduction to a new author, one whose work will earn a well-dogeared place in your own library: CS Lewis.

To be perfectly honest, I labored through the first chapters of Mere Christianity when I first encountered it at 19. I made a few false starts before I pushed on through those introductory chapters and into the heart of the book, but once there I realized that I was in the hands of an author adept at explaining complex concepts, and I began to see that the very questions I wrestled with as a new Christian could not only be answered, but could be answered in a logical way. (I have read the whole book many times since.)

C.S. Lewis fought in one world war but lived through them both, and he was a writer that spoke specifically to his time. But his voice carries, and his answers to the big questions about God and Christianity still satisfy readers today, when we, like the British soldiers and civilians of his original audience, struggle to understand why we should bother with Christianity–or any religion–at all.

Yet while he reasoned clearly on complex issues, he was not above telling stories that still appeal to children as well as adults, Christians as well as non-Christians, bookworms and those who are only caught by a good, old-fashioned adventure. His works span every genre and range in level of difficulty from those written for children (The Chronicles of Narnia) to works for adults; they cover everything from the afterlife (The Great Divorce) to prayer (Letters to Malcolm) to the question of pain and suffering (The Problem of Pain), all from a layman’s perspective, but with a scholar’s depth and a pitch-perfect ear for language (and humor).

C.S. Lewis seemed always to have the perfect metaphor for the most abstract ideas, and that is, I suppose, why his illustrations turn up in sermon after sermon: if C.S. Lewis has written about the issue in question, then I doubt if anyone else has written about it better.

” . . . it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy has been offered to us. We are far too easily pleased, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.” (The Weight of Glory)

Fiction for Children

– The Chronicles of Narnia: these are the books that earned Lewis a place on this blog, after all.

Fiction for Adults

– The Space Trilogy: these are all worth reading, but I bet you’ll be particularly taken with the second book, Perelandra.

– The Screwtape Letters: letters from a senior devil to a junior devil, on how to tempt and enslave a man.

– The Great Divorce: an exploration of the afterlife, in narrative form. Utterly unforgettable.

– Til We Have Faces: a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, told by Psyche’s older sister. Unique and absorbing.

Nonfiction for Adults

– Mere Christianity: an examination of what Christians believe and how they live in the light of those beliefs. A classic, and for good reason.

– The Weight of Glory: a collection of talks and sermons given at various points in his career. One of my favorites, it contains a number of his best-known illustrations, and is a good introduction to his nonfiction.

– The Four Loves: Lewis writes about the four different types of love.

– Surprised by Joy: Lewis’s “autobiography of faith,” in which he examines his own conversion from atheism to Christianity.

– Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer: one side of a correspondence about prayer.

– Reflections on the Psalms: a concise meditation on the psalms, from the perspective of Lewis as a layman. He answers some of the common issues in the Psalms (the vindictive violence, for example) in satisfying ways.

– Letters to Children: sweet and charming responses from Lewis to the children who wrote to him about his Narnia books. This book is lesser known, but it’s a treasure.

May 23, 2014 / 4 Comments

Featured Author: LM Montgomery

Today’s author is a new acquaintance (for me) and one whose presence in this post won’t exactly surprise you. My friends, I give you: L.M. Montgomery.

My affection for L.M. Montgomery is quite personal: you see, her stories gave me back the key to my imagination in a season when I sorely needed it—after the birth of my third child, when the Great Juggling Act of life with a newborn had begun again and the Regular Juggling Act of life with two older children continued without pause. I read a dozen or so of her books then, in those midnight moments, while nursing Phoebe; in back rooms at family gatherings, while nursing Phoebe; during the girls’ nap time, while nursing Phoebe.

LM Montgomery’s characters reminded me that, though I am a woman who needs to chop an onion, nurse a baby and help a three year old find her shoe—all in the next fifteen minutes—I am also a woman can sit for a minute on the front steps and watch the stars come out (while the children put their pajamas on), or listen to the hushed voices of the bamboo outside our kitchen window (when the chirruping voices of our home’s smaller occupants are stilled for a moment). She reminded me to look up from the budget and out the window, where the setting sun ignites the clouds and turns the sky a gorgeous, golden rose. She reminded me to find the stories in those things, to wonder at the world around me.

Yes, Montgomery can lay out a lush landscape. She can, in a few words, put her finger so precisely on the pulse of a character that the character springs, fully formed, into your mind’s eye. She can weave a story out of the stuff of ordinary life but with the colors of those things heightened, until you see them not as ordinary but as unforgettable and enchanting. But she has a way of giving us back to ourselves, reminding us adult readers of those childlike qualities that we had—perhaps accidentally—forsworn as we entered adulthood, as we forgot the bigness of the world inside a single flower and got caught up instead in the Things That Must Be Done Before Dinner. Her words are—to quote my friend, Angie, who kept me supplied me with Montgomery’s books during that first month after Phoebe’s birth—”life-giving.”

Montgomery wrote for serial publication, so, like any really prolific author, some of her works are markedly better than others. But any of them are worth dipping into, especially once you develop an unquenchable thirst for her language, lands and the inhabitants thereof. These are some of my favorites (in a particular order):

– Anne of Green Gables (yes, the entire series, including the extra volumes, Chronicles of Avonlea and Akin to Anne*)

– Emily of New Moon (I was slightly less smitten with the rest of the trilogy, but the other two books are worth reading)

– A Tangled Web

– Magic for Marigold

– Jane of Lantern Hill

– The Blue Castle

– Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat

*Akin to Anne is a collection of short stories about orphans who find, through unlikely means, their place among folks who love them—a common theme in Montgomery’s work. These stories are fun to read aloud with children who might be, as yet, too young to appreciate a full-length novel but who would, like Lydia, be enchanted by the characters, the scenery and, of course, the happy endings.

If you’re inspired to read more about LM Montgomery (and I hope you are), I highly recommend Jennifer Trafton’s piece “Smelling Flowers in the Dark” and Lanier Iveston’s four-part biography of LM Montgomery, both published on The Rabbit Room.

March 14, 2014 / 2 Comments

Featured Author: Madeleine L’Engle

In response to the question, “What is today?”, please select one of the following:

a) your birthday

b) Daylight Savings

c) the first anniversary of Little Book, Big Story

If you selected a), happy birthday! I owe you a cupcake. If you selected b), yikes. Rough week, then?

But if you selected c), well done! Let the lights flash and the bells ring and the announcer crow, “We have a winner!”

For one whole year, I’ve been writing book reviews, and to celebrate, I thought I’d do something a little special and introduce a new category to the blog. (I know. Wild times.) Today, we move off the beaten path of weekly reviews and into the fresh green grass of featured authors.

You see, as I very thoughtfully choose books to review on this blog, I find that there are some authors who have won my heart so thoroughly that I can’t decide which of their books to review first. These are the authors that I love for themselves, not for any single book, and whose name on the spine of an otherwise unknown volume is enough insurance for me to buy a copy without even peeking at the blurb on the back of the book. Introducing you to them is my way of saying, “Yes, we’ll get to the specific titles. But for now, just go get one of their books and start reading.”

To kick things off, we can’t start with just anyone. We’ll begin with the one author who almost had a Rosenburg daughter named in her honor (yes, I love this author that much): Madeleine L’Engle.

I love our house. It is quirky and dated, with a bright yellow kitchen in which people congregate and a laundry room door that opens with a skeleton key. When we bought it, we talked about how well the house would suit us when we grew old and we have visions of planting fruit trees and watching them grow from saplings to established, consistent companions.

Despite my love for this place, though, there is another house in my heart—a farmhouse with drafty attic bedrooms and a vine-covered wraparound porch. That house has a bright yellow kitchen in which people congregate, but that kitchen looks out over a wooded hillside and perhaps a mountain peak or two. Old-fashioned lamps sit in the windows of that house and cast pools of light on the slumbering kitchen garden and fruit trees too old for us (or our grandparents) to have known them as saplings.

I have loved that house for years. The house and the lands around it seemed so settled in my imagination that it was with a start that I realized, upon rereading A Wrinkle in Time, that the house was basically the Murrays’ house, forever endeared to me by that opening scene, where Meg, her mother and Charles Wallace gather in the kitchen for a midnight cup of cocoa. As I read on in Madeleine L’Engle’s works, I realized that it was also partly Crosswicks, the old farmhouse in rural Connecticut that she and her family shared, which just goes to show how vividly L’Engle’s books are imprinted on my memory.

Though best known for A Wrinkle in Time and the four subsequent books about the Murray family, L’Engle has written over sixty books of nonfiction, poetry and fiction (for children and adults). I have read and reread over twenty of her books and, of those I have read, I have loved nearly every one.

Her fiction for children is bright and original, full of characters that you can’t help loving by the end of the book. She tries her hand at many things and usually succeeds: the Time quartet deals with everything from tesseracts to mitochondria, while Meet the Austins paints a beautiful picture of family life. Her essays are quiet and slow-moving, but unforgettable, with Walking on Water taking the cake as my favorite volume of L’Engle’s nonfiction. All four of The Crosswicks Journals follow close behind.

L’Engle is a Christian author, so her works delve into issues like love and Creation in a deep, lasting way. Theologically, I don’t agree with her point for point, but on the central stuff, she’s reliable, and I generally put her books down with the idea that I’ve arrived at a new understanding of how the world fits together. I also tend to play the piano more when I read Madeleine L’Engle (she could describe a sonata beautifully), and wish I understood higher mathematics (she was also incredibly smart).

I cannot attest to the goodness of every single Madeleine L’Engle book out there—and I’m honestly not that sold on her fiction for adults—but I will leave you with a list of my favorite works for children and grown-ups.

Children

– A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters

– The Austin Family Chronicles, with particular emphasis on Meet the Austins and A Ring of Endless Light, but with the possible exception of The Young Unicorns (I wasn’t crazy about that one, either, and I don’t think you’d miss much if you skipped it)

Adults

– Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

– The Crosswicks Journals (A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, and A Two-Part Invention)

Category: Authors

Interview with Author Taylor Everett Brown

Interview with Eleazar and Rebekah Ruiz (Authors of Golly’s Folly)

Enter to Win a copy of Golly’s Folly

Featured Author: CS Lewis

Fiction for Children

Fiction for Adults

Nonfiction for Adults

Featured Author: LM Montgomery

Featured Author: Madeleine L’Engle

Children

Adults

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Books for Review

Category: Authors

Interview with Author Taylor Everett Brown

Featured Author: Sally Lloyd-Jones

Picture Books

Not Quite Picture Books

Christmas Books

Interview with Eleazar and Rebekah Ruiz (Authors of Golly’s Folly)

Enter to Win a copy of Golly’s Folly

Featured Author: CS Lewis

Fiction for Children

Fiction for Adults

Nonfiction for Adults

Featured Author: LM Montgomery

Featured Author: Madeleine L’Engle

Children

Adults

subscribe to the newsletter

Permissions

Affiliate Links

Books for Review

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