A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

Every author second-guesses a few of the choices she makes in writing a first book, but for me, one thing was never in doubt: the dedication. The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia is for Wilanne Belden, my second grade teacher, who is the person who first put a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into my hands when I was seven years old. She made a reader out of me.

The biggest treat in researching this book was getting to spend hours talking with Wilanne. I'd seen her once or twice in the intervening decades, and we'd exchanged a letter or two. But writing The Magician's Book turned out to be the perfect excuse to set aside plenty of time to find out more about the woman who had such profound effect on my life.

Wilanne grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio during the Depression. She was one of those kids who walked to the local public library every week to check out the maximum number of books allowed. She had a deal with her parents: They would buy her a copy of any library book she liked well enough to read three times all the way through. Then Wilanne discovered what would become her favorite book, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The Hobbit is long for a children’s book, and by the time she'd read it three times, the bookstores had sold out all their copies. So Wilanne decided to make a copy her own, checking the book out of the library over and over again, typing up a couple dozen pages at a time using two fingers on the family’s manual typewriter.

Naturally, this girl grew up to be the kind of teacher who understood what it means to hand a child the right book. (To my surprise, during our interview Wilanne told me that she'd had a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for a few years before she found a student who seemed like a good fit for it.) "I never have taught exactly the way they tell you to," she explained, referring to the current obsession with standardizing education. "It's strictly an individual kind of arrangement. You have a group with thirty-some children in the room, but you also have to try very hard to get to know the children well enough to know where they need to go from here."

It's all too easy for us to forget that teaching is a creative, intuitive profession. A great teacher not only makes sure her students learn what they need to know, she finds ever-changing ways to show each child that learning can be a source of lifelong delight and sustenance. In addition to the "three Rs," wonder is an essential ingredient in every classroom. I knew even before I wrote The Magician's Book that I would dedicate it to Wilanne, because without her it would never have been imagined, let alone written.