Books by Month: January

January Scaller has always felt like an in-between girl. Like just another curiosity collected by her wealthy ward Mr. Locke, tucked away in his mansion to gather dust. Her mother assumed dead, her father employed by Mr. Locke to travel the world to find him rare items to sell or add to his collection, January is left adrift for years and years. Until, she finds a book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. A book with a story that seems increasingly entwined with her own.

This is such a magical book that celebrates the art that is storytelling and writing. January’s ability to open deliberately closed doorways into other worlds by writing her wishes into reality implies this immense sense of freedom that can come from the simplest action. She is a symbol of care-free buoyancy in a world that weighs itself down with structure and order. The doorways she finds and/or creates reminded me of traveling to a different world through the pages of a book. But whereas books are a means of escape, the secret doors in this story are agents of unity – which the big bad villains of course do NOT like because they want their world to be only THEIR world. Where they see danger and chaos, others see freedom, adventure, and magic.

Lacking these magical doors in real life (as far as I know, at least), I’m even more grateful for books – this one and every other I have read as well as each one I have yet to read. Words are our magic. Whether we use them to express our thoughts and fantasies with others or are submerging ourselves in the words of another, they help us connect with one another – to unify. I hope we never run out of stories to tell.