D-12 teacher combines passions in teen fantasy books

What could be more exciting for a book club than having the author appear in person?

That’s what happened when the 30 students in the Cheyenne Mountain Junior High School club met recently to hash over “Griffin Rising,” a  fantasy set in Colorado Springs about a teen guardian angel.

Actually, it was a pretty easy getting author Darby Karchut there. Her classroom is just down the hall and around the corner from the school library where the kids meet.

“It was sublime, but a bit surreal. They were talking about the characters I dreamed up in my head as if they were real people,” Karchut, who teaches social studies, said with a laugh.

She got good reviews from most of the kids.

“I encouraged them to give their real opinion. I told them not every book is everyone’s cup of tea.”

School librarian Kaci Guthrie chooses books for the club, and says that “Griffin Rising” was a hit.

“She talked to them about the background, how everything was steeped in mythology, Gaelic lore, maybe things they wouldn’t have noticed on their own.”

Book club member Nicole Foss, 13, said, “It was awesome. It has a lot of plot twists and symbolism. And it was different, no vampires. It has angels. No one does angels.”

Eighth grader Hunter Edling is also a fan.

“It had new ideas that made me think about things. My favorite part was the action and it was set where we live.”

(Karchut uses Colorado Springs and surroundings as the setting, but calls it High Springs.)

The book just won the 2011 Sharp Writ Book Award for a young adult book, and received an honor medal from Readers Favorites.  The second book in her Griffin series, “Griffin’s Fire,” comes out in April, to be followed by two more. She’s also writing, “Finn Finnegan,” about a teen Celtic warrior.

You might expect Karchut to be an English teacher, considering all the writing she does and the enthusiasm she has for reading and writing. She’s been a teacher in Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 for 17 years,  including five as a a fifth grade teacher at Broadmoor Elementary, and 12 teaching a social studies.

“I’m a storyteller. I want to know if the bush explodes or if someone is punched out, not so much the literary beauty of the lines.”

All good teaching is storytelling, she believes, no matter if  the topic is “Mandela, the lone warrior fighting apartheid or Great Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis before the U.S. entered World War II.”

Social studies is grist for her imagination, along with ancient history and anthropology, which she majored in at the University of New Mexico.

She got the idea for the Griffin books when she ran across an obscure Middle Ages description of a lower caste of angels, who were guardians and controlled the four elements. She uses lore from many sources  — various religions,  classical Sparta, Irish myths, European feudal system, Plains Indians, Britain’s Royal Air Force. Her book’s fictitious “Kellsfarne Manuscript” is based on “The Celestial Hierarchy,” a fifth century work that influenced Thomas Aquinas.

But none of this is done with heavy hand.

Her hero Griffin belongs to a caste of supernatural beings know as the Terrae Angeli (earth angels). He is learning to have control over two of the elements, earth and fire, to help earthlings in trouble. His mentor Basil, who controls wind and water, has a more difficult job of controlling Griffin.  

Like any parent, Basil must deal with the youth’s teen angst — the slamming of doors, disobedience and, of course, begging, “Can I take the car” (even though, as an angel, he flies). Their relationship is frustrating, humorous and touching.  

Karchut decided to write young adult fiction for boys, because boys often give up reading, in part, because many books have female protagonists. Also, adults always think there are certain books kids should read.

“But it’s like a river, it doesn’t matter where they step in.”

Also, she notes, “We should  be presenting boys with more good male characters. Personally, I think boy’ books are more exciting. They are more apt to explore the great questions of life — who do I trust with my feelings, who’s got my back, how do I take those ethical steps into manhood?”  

Writing for boys is different. They like smart aleck humor, gross-outs, a lot of action, nothing too yucky romance-wise. She notes that studies have shown they like shorter sentences, too.

“The anthropologist in me finds it fascinating. For example, boys usually meet side by side, not face to face like girls do, so I try to convey those types of things in my writing.”

Karchut started writing fiction just a couple of years ago, and rewrote “Griffin Rising”  many times before she got it right.  “I’ve always been a voracious reader, and someone said that if you read and read and read, that finally you throw up a book.”

Like most teachers, she has a crammed schedule, so she writes in 15 minute sessions at home before school and in the evenings, plus longer stints on weekends and during summer break. It helps that she never watches TV.

She believes that reading isn’t necessarily a lost art. But, she says, “Our society has such frantic busy lives and distractions, and attention spans are shorter. But if you give kids the time to do nothing but read, they will.”

And that is what she does.

She insists her students bring a book of their choice to class, fiction or non-fiction. They spend the last 10 minutes of class reading.

“At first some did nothing, then it was a couple sentences, and then a paragraph, then a page. It’s a habit, like exercise.”

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