Hi, I had an idea for a young adult novel, but I don't have any experience writing for children, so I thought maybe you could tell me if the idea would work for young adults or not.
Basically what happens is a ten-year-old girl wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she ended up in this town called Eternity. Eternity is like an old 17th Century Puritan colony--like Plymouth or Salem--ruled by a reverend and his very strict rules known as The Way that ban just about anything fun like games, singing, and even reading. The kicker here is there are only three adults (the reverend, the schoolmistress/nanny/mother hen, and the henchman who keeps anyone from going in or out) in town and all the rest are kids younger than 11.
Even as our girl tries to fit in and make the best of her bad situation, she finds clues that something is very out of place in the town. Everything comes to a head when she finds a treasure trove of books--modern books that feature cars and airplanes and all sorts of other things no one in Eternity has ever heard of. This ultimately leads our girl to break into the reverend's lair, where she discovers that the reverend has been using the fountain of youth (and good ol' brainwashing) to keep everyone in town as children he can easily manipulate and control to fulfill his twisted utopian vision. The bad guys are defeated and our girl still doesn't regain her memory--gotta save something for the sequels--but now she and the other children are free to live their own lives now.
I guess what has been nagging at me is that the basic premise is about a girl being adopted by a nutty religious cult. I'm not sure if any kid (or anyone) would want to read that, although I suppose it's not so different than a child being taken in by a stern relative or orphanage or what have you.
I'd be grateful to hear anyone's input on this. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree or maybe I'm just making something out of nothing. Doesn't hurt to ask, right?
Basically what happens is a ten-year-old girl wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she ended up in this town called Eternity. Eternity is like an old 17th Century Puritan colony--like Plymouth or Salem--ruled by a reverend and his very strict rules known as The Way that ban just about anything fun like games, singing, and even reading. The kicker here is there are only three adults (the reverend, the schoolmistress/nanny/mother hen, and the henchman who keeps anyone from going in or out) in town and all the rest are kids younger than 11.
Even as our girl tries to fit in and make the best of her bad situation, she finds clues that something is very out of place in the town. Everything comes to a head when she finds a treasure trove of books--modern books that feature cars and airplanes and all sorts of other things no one in Eternity has ever heard of. This ultimately leads our girl to break into the reverend's lair, where she discovers that the reverend has been using the fountain of youth (and good ol' brainwashing) to keep everyone in town as children he can easily manipulate and control to fulfill his twisted utopian vision. The bad guys are defeated and our girl still doesn't regain her memory--gotta save something for the sequels--but now she and the other children are free to live their own lives now.
I guess what has been nagging at me is that the basic premise is about a girl being adopted by a nutty religious cult. I'm not sure if any kid (or anyone) would want to read that, although I suppose it's not so different than a child being taken in by a stern relative or orphanage or what have you.
I'd be grateful to hear anyone's input on this. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree or maybe I'm just making something out of nothing. Doesn't hurt to ask, right?
