Meeting Fablehaven's Brandon Mull

Beside the stump, dressed in crude rags, sat a wiry old woman gnawing at a knot in a bristly rope. Shriveled with age, she clutched the rope in bony hands with knobby knuckles. Her long, white hair was matted and had a sickly yellowish tint. One of her filmy eyes was terribly bloodshot. She was missing teeth, and there was blood on the knot she was chewing, apparently from her gums. Her pale arms, bare almost to the shoulder, were thin and wrinkled, with faint blue veins and a few purple scabs.

I used this creepy descriptive writing excerpt from Fablehaven a year before I actually read the entire book. A third grader named Dylan in my class was crazy about the hag named Muriel tied up in an old shack (she graces the cover of Book 1). In true Harry Potter style, the Fablehaven books hook young readers with fantastical plots, lovable characters, and settings you always wished to find in your own grandparents' back yard.

My own grandma Genevieve lived alone in a large house at the base of Mt. Olympus in Salt Lake. Off the back porch was a winding pathway that led zigzag, zigzag steeply down to a . . . you'll just have to guess. My brothers and I would play under a large evergreen tree whose roots were more exposed than buried. We sometimes created scenarios of armies of Hobbit-ish ogres living inside it and constructed protective fortresses in the bushes closer to the house.

Back to my story. Fablehaven's author, Brandon Mull, visited the school where I was student teaching and I, along with other young fans eager to buy his autographed books, was able to meet him. During his speech to the student body, he encouraged active imaginations of fearless writers who will create tomorrow's stories. Write, write, write and read, read, read. Then (this part was for me), SHARE, SHARE, SHARE.