Greetings
Hello and welcome.
If you’re reading this, then I hope you’re as excited as I am for our Wayward Children Monthly Read Along!
In just a couple of months, we’ll crack open the first book in the Wayward Children series and cross into Miss Seanan McGuire’s beloved world.
Ready?
Wayward Children Monthly
This Read Along is called “Wayward Children Monthly” as we’ll be reading one book in the series every month, starting in May of 2023, and ending in January of 2024.
If this schedule seems peculiar, the reasoning behind it is that the Wayward Children books come out every year in January.
So, if we start the series in May of 2023, then we’ll have finished the last of the currently-published books in December of 2023; and we’ll be ready for the newest book to launch, in January of 2024.
Here are the books in the Wayward Children series, listed in publishing order (the same order we’ll read them in), and the month we’ll read them:
- “Every Heart a Doorway” (May 2023)
- “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” (June 2023)
- “Beneath the Sugar Sky” (July 2023)
- “In an Absent Dream” (August 2023)
- “Come Tumbling Down” (September 2023)
- “Across the Green Grass Fields” (October 2023)
- “Where the Drowned Girls Go” (November 2023)
- “Lost in the Moment and Found” (December 2023)
- Book with Unknown (as of March 2023) Title (January 2024)
Connecting Online
So that we may find each other on social media and discuss the books, we’ll use this hashtag:
#WaywardChildrenMonthly
(I’m on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook; so, I hope to chat with you on these platforms. However, please feel free to also use our hashtag and discuss the books on other platforms, too!)
Go Ahead Now, Take a Peek
If you want to learn more about the world of the Wayward Children, here’s a pair of URLs for you, beginning with a Wikipedia article (which doesn’t have much info, but still may help), and then the Wayward Children fan wiki:
An Honored Series
In September of 2022, the Wayward Children series won the Hugo Award for Best Series!
Winning a Hugo is an honor, and it’s also a recognition of what this series means to all of the readers who voted for it.
If you’d like to learn more about the Hugo Awards &/or see the full slate of nominees and winners from that year’s ceremony, here are a pair or URLs for you:
The Book That Stole my Heart
The first book in this series (“Every Heart a Doorway”) is one of my two favorite works by a living author, and I’d like to finish this post by sharing some details about the book, as well as my love for it.
Note: This section is taken from the following post of mine:
https://library-girl.com/2022/08/15/my-favorite-works-from-living-authors/
“Every Heart a Doorway” by Seanan McGuire
What happens after you return from Oz, or Wonderland?
What do you with your life, and where do you go?
If you’re a child who is recovering from your adventures through a portal, and wanting to return to that other place, then you may be asked to attend “Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.”
This story is grounded by a web of characters who form bonds, antagonize, and support each other, as they try to learn who they are, what “home” means, and who the killer among them is.
There’s also a magic to SMG’s writing; she has a gift for breaking our hearts in beautiful ways.
More than once, I was smiling and crying at the same time from something said or done in “Every Heart a Doorway.”
I also had the joy of seeing fragments of myself reflected back at me, in Nancy (our point-of-view character, this time around), Jack (my favorite character in the “Wayward Children” stories), Christopher, and Kade.
In this series, every portal from our world to a different one is marked with the words “Be Sure.”
I hope you’re now Sure, and ready to enter the world of the Wayward Children.
For more background on this book and its world, here’s an interview with SMG, from shortly before “Every Hear a Doorway” was published:
https://www.tor.com/2016/03/17/after-ever-after-an-interview-with-seanan-mcguire-and-lee-harris/
“Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,
Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names”
In 2008 (eight years before “Every Heart a Doorway” was published) SMG wrote a song called “Wicked Girls.”
SMG notes that, “When @LeeAHarris at @TorDotComPub asked me for a novella, I thought of that song, and how much I wanted to write the story that went with it, but how much I didn’t want to be locked into those unhappy endings. The story followed.”
Here’s the lyrics to “Wicked Girls” and a post from Tor.com that shares a thread where SMG explains this (and other interesting points about the “Wayward Children” books):
Looking Forward
I hope this activity sparks your interest, and I look forward to doing it with you!
Our Wayward Children Monthly Read Along will be entirely online, so you may join-in on the conversation from anywhere.
I’ll remind you via social media, as the date for starting each book approaches.
Until then, happy reading, and I’ll meet you at the doorway on May 1st, 2023!
Love,
Your Library Girl, Mina
Thank you for reading.
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