by Nick Ruth

Very often, I read a book and wonder where the ideas came from.

Just as in the story, it all started with a caterpillar. Well, that, and also the Magic School Bus books and a bad case of the flu.

Let me back up and start again. When my son was younger, he really loved the Magic School Bus books. We read those books over and over. After a while, I got tired of reading the same books and started embellishing them to entertain my son (and myself!). We invented a character called Magical David (it's all so fuzzy; I can't be sure who came up with the idea, but like most great ideas, I'm sure we both had a hand in it) who always came in to save the day and help Ms. Frizzle and the kids in unusual ways.

At around the same time, my son was also very interested in insects. When Family Fun magazine printed an article on raising Monarch butterflies, it seemed like a perfect fit. So we embarked on a project that has become a family obsession. Every year, we roam the fields and abandoned lots, examining milkweed plants looking for Monarch caterpillar eggs. We raise the eggs until they transform into butterflies, then release them. One year, we even tagged the butterflies for Monarch Watch, an organization that studies the migration of the Monarch butterflies.

One day, my whole family was sick with the flu. My son suggested that we all draw pictures to make ourselves feel better. He drew a picture of a whirlwind of colored dots rising into the sky, which he called magic power. My wife drew a healing amulet to help us get over the flu. I looked at the whirlwind and took it a step further by drawing a picture of the Imaginator, showing how Magical David got his powers.

Out of these three pictures, the basis of the story was born. The whirlwind would become spectrum; the Imaginator would reap the whirlwind and the healing amulet would save the day. Remin and The Dark Dreamweaver began to twinkle in my mind's eye but the story still needed the Age of the Renaissance and Legos.

Huh?

The Power of Imagination

"Our name comes from the combination of the Danish 'leg godt', which means to 'play well.' It is both our name and our nature. We believe that play is the essential ingredient in a child's growth and development. It grows the human spirit. It encourages imagination, conceptual thinking and creation."

The philosophy of the Lego company is taken directly from their website. It is very accurate: my son is always showing me collections of these multi-colored bricks with fantastic stories behind them. One day he took all the little character heads and built a single character with heads lined up on the arms. When I saw it, I immediately exclaimed "Sir Heads-a-Lot!" My son loved the name and another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Shortly after that I came home to find little islands of Legos leading to a Lego mountain with a red Lego door at the top. I added Doorcliff to my inventory of story ideas. But there was still something missing...

The Power

Now I have a head full of imaginative ideas and places and the seeds of a story yearning to break free but I still lacked some crucial item. I didn't know what it was but the story was not going anywhere without it. We found ourselves at a Renaissance Festival browsing through merchant shops and enjoying the day when my son rushed over with his eyes gleaming and dragged me over to see the missing piece. He had no idea that my mind was constructing a story out of the myriad musings of his imagination when he handed me a glass wand with a small vial on the end. The vial was filled with tiny colored glitter!

The Story

So here it is: Monarchs, boy wizards, glass wands, multi-colored magic and Legos all coming together to form the nucleus for The Dark Dreamweaver. Enjoy.

email this page | 1897 reads