Tourmaline and the Island of Elsewhere Blog Tour

For my stop on the blog tour, I welcome a blog post from author Ruth Lauren about her favourite adventure stories! I wonder whether you have similar favourites from your own childhood!

Hi Erin, 

Thanks so much for hosting me on your blog! Here’s a little piece on my favourite childhood and modern adventure stories. 

I loved reading adventure books as a child. My favourites always transported me to a magical place. I went off to whichever land was at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree. I spent entire weekends in Narnia. I travelled with Doctor Dolittle and Bilbo Baggins. 

And I never really stopped reading children’s books – I had my first son at a young age and I read to all my children. (Have I cried every single time I’ve read the scene where a certain thing happens to a certain lion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Why yes, yes I have).

By the time I started writing my own books, I was still reading – and loving – adventure stories. So it only made sense that I loved writing them too (my first two published books are a fantasy adventure duology set in a Russian-inspired fantasy land. Think Prison Break meets Frozen.) The breadth and sophistication of His Dark Materials spoke to me. I devoured The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer, The Legend of Podkin One-Ear. To journey far from home and come back changed – it was what I wanted to read, what I wanted to write, what I wanted to do.

I could list favourites forever – recently I’ve loved the wonderful Utterly Dark. Anything by Frances Hardinge. Just anything. She can do no wrong. Storm-Wake by Lucy Christopher – whimsical and windswept and magical.

And all of this curled up in an armchair resting hardbacks from the library on the arm of the sofa because they were too heavy for little me to hold. Or reading to my children, perched on their beds as they listened. Or tapped out on my laptop as I smiled and raced on to writing the next page (or sighed and looked out of the window and decided to eat some crisps instead, let’s be honest). I’ve been on a few adventures of my own, but I’ve been on thousands with Susan and Lucy, with Lyra, Feo, Podkin, Utterly and so, so many more. Who wouldn’t want that?