Reading the Stories of Truth

Another novel by Jennifer Donnelly, A Gathering Light, is for want of a better word, perfect. Every chapter has a different word and really, how many people in this world know that hispidulous is a word for a surface covered with short bristly hairs like a man's unshaved face. What really touched me in this story is her emphasis on books.

The main character of the book, Mattie, is a book lover and who writes her own stories. She herself was expressing why no one wrote the truth about things, like how a pig pen looks like after a sow has eaten her own young or how cancer smells like. All this is quoted. Her teacher and mentor, Miss Wilcox, replied, " Make them care Mattie."

It is true, hardly any of the renowned writers like J.K Rowling or Alexandre Dumas ever write things that has a great value, that feeds on our minds and lets our souls really ponder on the true, deep meanings behind it. Take Alma Alexander for example, author of the Embers of Heaven. She knows that life is not flouncy and perfect and always has to end with a happy note. It ends with a lament that we are trying to throw back our foundations of tradition to grasp at straws of revolutionary ideas. What seems weak, might prove to be stronger after a thousand years have passed. Only that we never live long enough to realise that.

Perhaps those writers for children do not want to scare them but from young we need to know the truth, not go through life thinking that is a fairy tale and it doesn't matter if they make a colossal mistake for there will be some prince or heroine at the end and you will live happily ever after. What we need in this world are writers who use their skill and eloquence in language to speak the truth we need to fear. Never mind if it does not have the same spells at Hogwarts or the battles of King Henry the Fifth. All we need is the truth.