BOOK MAGIC by author TJ Banks

Not all books are magical…sad but true. But the ones that are leave me feeling like the princess in George MacDonald’s story “The Wise Woman.” Standing before a beautiful painted landscape, she says to herself, “I do not believe it is a picture. It is the real country, with a real hill, and a real little girl upon it.” So sure is she on this score, she steps over the frame and into the painting, exclaiming, “I am free, I am free!”
The most magical books have the same freeing effect on me. They’re the ones that take me out of myself and lead me into Narnia, Edward IV’s court , a Welsh mining town, or Cold Sassy Tree, where the townsfolk know everybody else’s business or can quickly make something up if they don’t. Literature happens outside of time: when something we read truly touches us, we step out of time, too.
These books don’t even necessarily have to be great literature. For years, I’ve been in love with Joyce Stranger’s novels, which are set in the British, Welsh, and Scottish countryside. Is she a great novelist? Probably not. But she had a gift for weaving word-pictures and knew how to create worlds with them – worlds so vivid, I can feel the wind on the hills and moors and see the wildcats, deer, and other animals that play a part in her stories. That’s magic. And it carries me.

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Thanks for those inspiring words, TJ.
Find out more about TJ’s novel, A TIME FOR SHADOWS at these links:
http://www.tjbanks927.blogspot.com
Book: http://www.publishingworks.com/authors/bnks_tj.html