A Closer Look at Volume One: Into the Garden
The Three Challenges that Gracie must face which are common to us all
The original kernel of an idea that began this plot line was rather simple. It was to be about how Gracie faced three challenges that we all face. The book was intended to help children face those challenges, and I wanted to follow Gracie’s story of growing up while facing Three Scary Things.
The Three Big Scary Things in Volume One
The Big Scary Thing. This is the first challenge Gracie faces. She must tell Nate what is in her heart. She must trust him enough to let him know she loves to dance and asks for his approval to dance across the floor of the sunroom. This is how children must first trust their family and feel free to share their hearts.
The Bigger Scary Thing. This is the second challenge Gracie faces. She must tell her friends, the other chickens that she is growing up with, what is in her heart. She must trust herself enough to let them know she loves to dance and then perform in front of them. This is how children learn to fit into their peer group in their neighborhood or at school while still being themselves. This is perhaps the most difficult challenge that children face these days due to teasing and bullying.
The Biggest Scary Thing. This is the third challenge that Gracie faces. She must face her own fears within herself while also facing an external problem presented by a villain the chickens have named The Sewer Rat. This is how children build on what they have learned through interactions with family and friends and move out into the real world and into an ever-expanding circle.
*Special Note* One of the questions that spans across the series is this: Which of the chickens is The Key to The Living Library? It must be someone who is able to combine what they know in their head knowledge from The Living Library with what they know in their heart knowledge from life experiences.
The Three Villains Across the Series
In the three volumes of this series, there are three villains, one to be thwarted in each volume with the final defeat of all three in the last volume. This is a reflection of the format of the first volume’s three Big Scary Things, each more serious than the last.
Volume One: Into the Garden. Gracie must face The Sewer Rat who wants Gracie to leave the safety of their coop and then runaway with him so he can make her a star. The chickens find out that The Sewer Rat is a recruiter for Professor Accipiter’s Blue Moon Circus and Sideshow Extravaganza. Gracie combines what her head has learned from the songbirds of The Living Library with what her heart has learned from her friendships. She invents a marvelous machine named The Sewer Rat Eradicator. Could Gracie be The Key to The Living Library?
Volume Two: Over the Chimney. Amelia must face Professor Accipiter. After helping Pearl with producing a comedy show titled “Pearl’s Comedy Coop,” Amelia decides to leave the garden home to find out if she can be “lost and not afraid.” Emily’s curious drawing ability helps Amelia to fly to the moon and proves what Nate had said, “Drawing lets you do things you could never do any other way.” However, Amelia actually lands in a little village named Moon, Virginia. (Yes, an actual place and not far from Eclipse, Virginia.) There she discovers the off-season home of Professor Accipiter and sees up close what happens to the chickens and other birds who are lured away. She must find a way to free all of the birds while keeping herself safe and returning back home with the help of Emily’s curious drawing ability. Could Emily be The Key to The Living Library?
Volume Three: Through the Gate. The six chickens together must face The Air Shadows and The Absence Of Love. By chance, Emily draws a picture of a garden gate in Paris, France which allows them to travel to the where Gracie will at last be able to fulfill her dream and her promise to Nate by dancing on the stage of the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opera Ballet. But they are startled to find that Professor Accipiter and The Sewer Rat are already there ahead of them and have a plan to destroy The Living Library. Pearl earns money to buy drawing supplies for Emily by dancing in the famous Moulin Rouge. In the dramatic conclusion, Nate and Gracie discover they are only able to defeat the villains by keeping the promises made to each other when Gracie was a little chick. It certainly looks as if they have all been part of a much larger plan all along, a plan designed by The Presence of Love. In the end, because of Pearl’s ingenious experience and planning, the The Living Library is preserved while The Air Shadows andThe Absence of Love are defeated. Could Pearl, the most unlikely of the all, be The Key to The Living Library?
The illustration above is just a possibility for how The Sewer Rat and Professor Accipiter will be drawn for Nate’s notebook. The excerpt is from the chapter titled “The Sewer Rat’s Page.” As background, The Laughing Gull is a Page in The Living Library and he keeps a record of the important details of The Sewer Rat’s life. He knows some information about Professor Accipiter as well simply because of the close relationship between these two villains. The Laughing Gull also believes that Pearl is quite extraordinary in her own way even though the other chickens do not.
***Next Time*** A Look At How Chickens Make Things Without Hands
I enjoyed reading this behind-the-scenes look!