Lose yourself in a world of secrets
Author Jordan Lees loves magic dolls and mazes.
As a teenager, Jordan Lees started writing a story about a character who used a magical doll, called a poppet, to cast spells. He would have loved to have had one when he was little, to keep him company or protect him when he felt scared.
Lees began to play with the idea of a doll that could come to life and perform magic. He continued to gather new ideas for his story as the years went on. “That world just kept getting bigger,” he told The Week Junior. Eventually, this magical world became the setting for his new book, The Whisperwicks: The Labyrinth of Lost and Found.
It’s about 11-year-old Benjamiah, who believes in science, logic and reason over magic. However, when he gets sent a mysterious doll that can turn into a bird, he soon finds himself in a magical world called Wreathenwold. Within this labyrinth (a mass of winding paths or streets), he finds a girl called Elizabella and joins her quest to find her missing brother. Along with magical dolls, labyrinths have always fascinated Lees. Not only are they amazing to look at, he said, it’s also interesting that humans would build a maze that people can get lost in. While he was writing the book, Lees realised that being inside a maze isn’t so very different from life, because people don’t always know how the choices they make will change the path that they’re on.
No one else in Lees’s family used to read as much as he did when he was young, but he loved to get lost in fantasy worlds. Stories like The Hobbit and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe gave him the inspiration to dream up his own fantastical tales.
He hopes that his book can encourage other children to do some of their own daydreaming. After all, “I think that is the best thing about being a kid, isn’t it?” says Lees.