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Launch team! Books 3-4

Greetings, dear Featherheads! You may be interested to note that there is an opportunity upon us just now—an invitation, in fact, to help launch the next two Wingfeather books!

The whole series is being reprinted in beautiful hardcover with brand-new cover art and illustrations. The first two are out now—I hope you have seen them!—and the next two come out September 15. That means that very shortly, we get to make a LOT of noise about our favorite Wingfeathers. (You can start now, actually. You are always welcome to make noise about Wingfeathers. I will not stop you, although if you are in the library I might suggest you make noise outside. 😉)

So what does this launch team include, you might ask? Early access to the books, for one thing! Plus the pride of knowing that you took your stand against the fearsome Fangs of Dang. All you need is a social media account (for noise-making purposes).

Applications are open until August 5! Click here to be voomed to the application!

An end and a beginning

My dear Flabbits, Featherheads, and Fendril-riders, I have been so glad and so honored to be your librarian. Over the last five years it has been a delight to watch you develop friendships, create worlds together, and discuss everything under the sun, from Wingfeather and other books, to dead languages and silly games, to good and difficult experiences in our own lives. It's been good to get to know you, not just as readers but as people. I have made some very dear, lifelong friends here myself, and I'm so glad to know, even as this phase comes to a close, that so many of you wonderful forum-dwellers have also found ways to stay connected.

As Andrew said last week, things change, in the internet and in our own lives, and we aren't currently able to maintain a full community here at the site. But the site will continue, even though the forums must close. All the content we've built over the years will remain up until the new site launches later this summer, and we've got LOTS of ideas spinning for how to make it awesome. Whatever it ends up looking like, I'm excited to share it with you.

I would leave you with two blessings today. One, which I shared in the forum last week, and one which was shared in return.

One of my favorite poets, T.S. Eliot, says in his Four Quartets, “Not fare well, but fare forward, voyagers.” :-) We are all leaving this forum different than when we arrove. We are losing the forum itself, but we can’t lose what we gained here. We can go forward and bring it forward with us. (It is okay to be sad, though. I feel both sad and excited myself.)

And in the words of one Mischievous Thwapling:

May the Maker watch over you, wherever your footsteps fall. Whether you stumble in the darkest valleys, or stand atop the highest mountain, remember, He loves you.

With the fondest fare forwards,
Song Maiden Thwapling.

Now we are off on another adventure, flung wide into the world. :-) Dear friends: Can I help you?

—Madame Sidler

A Change Cometh!

Greetings, dearest Featherheads! (I don't remember where that name came from, but I like it.) As you know, the new editions of books three and four are releasing in September, which means the team is working hard to get the series marketed to as many people as possible. Many of you who frequent this blog have been fans and supporters of the Wingfeathers since the beginning, and I think you'd agree that we want even more people to read this story. That's what's behind the new relationship with Random House.

Well, one of the things we want to do to ramp up to the new release is to give the website a hefty revamp. I'm not sure yet what it'll feature, but after some good conversations with smarter people than me, I've decided I want the site to be an informational hub—a place where new and old friends can discover the world of Aerwiar, get updates on the progress of the movie, dig into some lore and artwork, and come away with an imagination that much more tingly. I approve of well-tingled imaginations.

For the last several years, the inimitable, indubitable, indibnible Laure, a.k.a. "Madame Sidler," has moderated the forum, written book club guides, come up with new weekly content for the blog, and has generally fanned the flame with her fearsome feather. She's truly remarkable—an actual librarian, a grad student, a voracious reader, and a veritable encyclopedia of Wingfeather knowledge. You may not realize this, but she knows more about the Wingfeather Saga than I do. Hers is the kind of brain that actually remembers dates and epochs and minor characters and timelines. Mine is the kind of brain that comes up with this stuff and years later has to email Madame Sidler for help with edits to the new editions.

Her generous and nurturing presence in the forums has guided the many conversations, something she took on partly because I don't have the time and energy to spin yet another plate, and partly because she simply loves what she loves with great passion. I'm quite fortunate that her gaze fell upon the Wingfeather Saga all those years ago. We all are.

That said, one upcoming change is the retirement of the forums. They've served their purpose well, but the ways of the interwebs have changed drastically over the years, and there are better platforms for the kind of interaction we've had here. Neither she, nor I, nor anyone else on the team is equipped with the time and energy it would take to continue moderating and tending to the garden of good conversations that have happened there. Please know this: we love that you guys have had that place to exchange ideas and get to know each other! I hope those conversations continue, under the guidance of your parents (if you're a kid), over on Facebook or wherever. (Yes, there's a Wingfeather page there, in case you missed it.)

I just didn't want y'all to be surprised by the absence of the forum link, and wanted you to know our reasoning. I'm not sure when the new site will go live, but the forums will be disabled sooner rather than later. I really think it'll free up some time and energy for even more fruitful labors.

Madame Sidler's going to continue to shape the content on the site (thank goodness!), so she's not going anywhere. But would you join me in thanking Laure for the massive amount of work she's so faithfully done on our behalf? When you read the new editions you should know that many of the corrected timelines and such were due to that remarkable brain of hers. We truly wouldn't have the site or the resources or the edits without her help. So high-five, Madame Sidler! We're all so very grateful.

In the meantime, keep spreading the word about the series, if you please! I have this wild hope that the release of books three and four will bump this thing onto the New York Times bestseller list. That would be fun, right? RIGHT?

Gratefully,

AP

Want to talk about what this change looks like, and how to stay connected? Click here.
—Madame Sidler

How stories situate us

David Rice over at Fathom ("a digital platform that compels people to seek out the depths of Christian faith") wrote a compelling little piece about the Wingfeather Saga earlier this month. In it, he talks about some of the formative value of stories.

A good story can situate one rightly in the world. A good story can help us come closer to the deepest, most true things about our lives, our world, our assumptions, and ourselves. A good story can invite us to rethink who is good, and who is bad. A good story draws us into awe and wonder. A good story can also help us remember who we are.

Thank you, David. Readers, you can catch the whole review here.

LEGO Ideas

I stumbled across something super cool today! Did you know that LEGO builders can submit product ideas for review by official designers? Well, there's currently a fan-designed scene from The Warden and the Wolf King collecting votes for review. :-)

The path to having your design approved is arduous—a design needs ten thousand votes!—so it's probably too early to freak out yet. But it's a cool design and it just made me happy to see it. If you want to take a look (and add your vote!), here's the idea page.

The elf-land of Aerwiar

A mystery reviewer known as The Book Lover recently wrote a lovely review of the first two books of the Wingfeather Saga. Here's a snippet:

If the first book is the bridge that takes you to the elf-land, the second book, North! Or Be Eaten, is the tale that awakens and gives you the light that you take back with you to your own world. ... By now the secret of the Igiby children has come to light and we travel along with them as they try to learn what these revelations mean for them. It is in this book that I found bits of light for my own life.

Thank you for these words, Book Lover! I raise my bean-brew cup to you. Readers, you can find the rest of the review here.

I love this phrase: "Bits of light for my own life." What bits of light have you found in the Igibys' story?

Spacetime, pancakes, and certainty in uncertainty

We have all felt frustrated and worried and sometimes a little lost during "these uncertain times," haven't we? Quarantine and masks and injustice and protests... and in the midst of it, life goes on. Some of you may be graduating and trying to figure out what's next in a world that looks very different from the way it did just months ago. Andrew's daughter Skye (the Song Maiden) just graduated amidst all this, too, and Andrew gave the commencement speech for her and her fellow graduates. This morning the Rabbit Room posted the full text, and I link it here in case it is also helpful for you.

Uncertainty is no reason to stop adding to the beauty of the world. We don’t know what’s coming. Write songs anyway. Make pies. Plant gardens. Why? First of all, you might be in Babylon for longer than you think. Second of all, gardens are beautiful. And beauty is one of the best ways to fight the darkness. I love Skye’s song “Sandcastles,” because it’s a reminder to get busy, to “color the world in your own little way,” because the love that lives in beauty lasts forever. It is unshakeable. So step out into the post-Coronavirus world and plant whatever garden God has called you to plant. Pull the weeds of injustice and evil. Plant so much beauty that it chokes out the poison.

To read the rest of Andrew's speech, click here. (And here is a very short video clip.)

The stories are true.