It was a lovely May morning under the arbor on our bricked back porch. We love family time. We love being out in the morning before the sun has climbed high and grown hot. And we love a good story.
We had been waiting for this story for months. To our great delight it finally arrived, and there in the early cool of the day we read its final pages. Our hearts were thrilled with the song of the stones, the terrors of the deeps of throg, a family fighting through affliction, heroes and villains, friends and foes, laughter and tears.
There’s much to ponder in The Wingfeather Saga, much about the way the Maker moves, about the way it’s always too early to quit, about the way the Maker takes a failure and makes a flourish, about how singing for love rather than power will make a bent song beautiful, and on and on . . . And this isn’t just a book for the kids to think about, though think on it they should and will.
The Monster in the Hollows isn’t what you think, but it is Book Three in the Wingfeather Saga. Reading these stories as a family has been made more fun as we follow Andrew Peterson’s progress on his blog and twitter updates, as we see the way other readers react in song and form to the tales he tells, and as we pray that the Lord will continue to cause his gaze to pierce into the way things really are.
Andrew Peterson is a lover of language, a poet with a heart full of melody. And hope. And joy. And faith. And love. More than once as I read this book aloud to my boys my voice choked with emotion. More than once I paused to read and re-read lines for their loveliness. And as we slowly savored the sorrow and joy, the triumph and tragedy in those final pages of the book, I found it more beautiful than I had hoped it could be. In the night, hope lives on. We read those final pages slowly, then read them again, and again.
What would it have been like to have read The Chronicles of Narnia as old Clive Staples finished them? What would it have been like to read along with Tolkien as he produced The War of the Ring? We won’t know, but if you jump in right now, you can read along with Andrew Peterson as he moves toward the completion of The Wingfeather Saga, and you can join us in asking the Maker to bless Andrew as he seeks to be used to seal the song in the soul, to write the word on the heart, and to fill the sight with the form of the beauty of a better world.
Love the smiles on Jake and Jed! I also am grateful, deeply grateful, for the way in which these books have nurtured my boy’s imagination!
Hi from the Wrights of Wheeling, WV! (of First Baptist Church). What an excellent book recommendation. We are so excited to get these books for our children to enjoy and plan to read them aloud to them as well! We enjoy Andrew Peterson’s “Dancing in the Minefields” song so much and look forward to reading his work. Your description of these books would do well on the book’s back cover material!
Wow. I was checking out my competition for the Wingfeather Book Review contest on the Rabbit Room, and I was really amazed by your review of the books. Very well written, and very clever. I can tell you are a writer.
Just finished “The Monster in the Hollows” last night (4 hours straight to finish the last 100 pages or so). I love the way Andrew Peterson’s biblical worldview (the “true” story) comes through on every page. Humility, grace, perseverance, redemption. Themes everpresent throughout this story and the previous two books. The phrase “the glory of your humility” rung in my ears during worship this morning at church. And everyday I want to be reminded: “Remember who you are.”