My eleven-year-old loves fantasy fiction, so when I saw this month’s preteen/teen Tommy Mommy selection, I jumped on it.  The Door Within is a fantasy story – the first installment in a trilogy – but it’s also an allegory of the Christian life.

When the story begins, we learn that Aidan has just had to move away from his long-time home so his family can care for his aging grandfather.  The bitter teen is not adjusting well to the change.  (In fact, my only “beef” with the book is that there are some bad attitudes portrayed in these earlier portions of the story.  They are in keeping with the character and his stage of development, but I wouldn’t want my daughter to imitate them.)  Then he finds his way into another realm, and there the real story plays out.

Without getting into too much detail, because I don’t want to spoil anything, this other realm is a parallel dimension – essentially an image of the spiritual world.  There, battles are fought and won to impact the world we live in.

Although I don’t read everything my daughter reads (there is no way I could possibly keep up!), I do read books like this with theological implications, before I give them to her.  Allowing for the literary liberties that come with creating an allegory, as opposed to nonfiction, I found it quite sound.  The allegorical expression builds, in my opinion, as you approach the end of the book.

As far as the story goes, I think I enjoyed it almost as much as my daughter did.

She did pick up on the parallels, too.  In fact, she had a single complaint when she returned the book to me, which had to do with what she perceived as a theological inaccuracy.  (And she was right, sort of.  I don’t want to say more, so as not to give anything away, but she missed a detail which resolved the “inaccuracy” to my satisfaction.  If you want to know specifics, feel free to email me.)

This book is marked as an “accelerated reader” book by Thomas Nelson. I’m having trouble finding information regarding exactly what that means (accelerated for whom?), but the reading level was good for Ariel, I think.  Apart from some subtle boy-girl threads (which I might have personally avoided for the preteen age range), I thought all the content was appropriate for her age, but the reading wasn’t too easy.  (We have strong readers in our family, so it can sometimes be hard to find appropriate content that isn’t “baby” books.

I don’t know about Ariel, but I’m looking forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy!

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