![]() That brought about the thought: “What would happen if you retreated into a book that you couldn’t then escape? What if you didn’t want to escape?” Bullying and loneliness seems to be a downward spiral that’s almost impossible to recover from. It made me begin to think about what I do when I felt alone as a teenager: I escaped into a book. I’m always encouraging my students to read and I wanted to create a book that students would enjoy and realize that they weren’t the only ones who felt alone. A few years ago, I was attending workshop after workshop about these topics and it struck me that I wanted to do something about it on the literary level. We’ve been discussing bullying and teenage suicide more and more. How and why did you come up with the concept for The Outerlands ?Īs a teacher, I’ve been noticing a strong trend in high school. Get the book on Amazon and don’t forget to add the book to your TBR pile on Goodreads! Will Alex ever find a place where he feels safe? Before he can get used to his new home, it’s threatened by an outside force. The Outerlands are a twisted version of his favorite story, with strange characters and unnatural dangers. He ends up in a world reminiscent of his childhood Wonderland, but nothing is as it was in Alice’s day. Dwight’s pills seemed to promise escape… and escape is exactly what he gets. It’s intense and utterly whimsical!Īlex didn’t want to die, but he just couldn’t take it anymore. In THE OUTERLANDS, a YA novel by Jared R. ![]()
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