About Journey
Graeme MacQueen - student, teacher, author, and practitioner of peace studies.
Graeme MacQueen was born and raised in Canada. He was trained as an expert in Indian religion and in the mid-1990s, when Griffin Ondaatje decided to bring out a book of stories from ancient India re-told by contemporary authors, he asked MacQueen to contribute. So he contributed four stories to The Monkey King & Other Stories, which was published in 1995 by HarperCollins. The next year HarperCollins India brought out a separate edition of the book.
In the year 2000, Orient Longman chose one of MacQueen’s stories from The Monkey King for its GulMohar English reader. This made the story, “Brighter Still,” available to 100,000 young people each year in India. (MacQueen was asked again in 2014 if the story could be included in Orient BlackSwan’s 8th edition of the GulMohar reader.)
MacQueen also worked with several Afghan organizations in a peace-making project dedicated to providing entertaining, healing stories for youngsters in Afghanistan. Two of MacQueen’s original stories were published in Afghanistan, and translated into Dari and Pashto, by UNICEF. One of them, “Merza’s Heart,” was performed on the radio in Canada (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 2002.
MacQueen was then asked to write an original book-length story for young readers. The result was Journey to the City of Six Gates.
Judy's Review
How wonderful! Lovely! Enchanting! Haunting! The symbolism is magnificent.
The poetry – the music – the mysticism – it’s so wonderful…somewhere between Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. But you’ve really invented your own genre. This is a story for all humankind. It is universal –not just for India or for young people. It’s an allegorical journey that means so much on so many different levels.
There is a thread of kindness in the book – of people helping each other – carrying for each other – rescuing each other – never giving up on each other – such a wonderful sense of duty and compassion – not only on the individual level but at the realm of the whole of nature as well – care of the trees – care for the civilization as a whole – there is a theme of reform and reformation – of overcoming fear and evil and the symbolism of the mirrors (the false heaven) that comes crashing down.
This is so strong and lovely. The threads work so well together – the magic and the elemental and the dreamlike imagery – the chants and the spells and the poetry – the sense of duty and devotion – it’s such a good book for young readers – it will inspire values and hope.
You just blew me away – adults and kids will love this.
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