Battle Between King Arthur and Sir Mordred, William Hatherell (1850)

Being the overachiever that I am, I somehow ended up with 20 college credits and two part-time jobs for Fall 2025, and in an effort to lighten my reading load this fall (about 400 pages a week, if I’m calculating correctly . . . which I kind of hope I’m not), I’ve started reading some of my textbooks over the summer.

Given that all but two of my books are primary sources (and those two are a Latin grammar and Latin dictionary respectively), it’s not as bad as it sounds. Ironically, my mind is always more inclined towards academic reading during the summer than during the school year, so my reading list has been very enjoyable so far. (And there’s nothing like discussing Marcus Aurelius over dinner—our weekend guests didn’t know what they were getting themselves into!)

As a writer, one of the first books I picked up was Aristotle’s Poetics—arguably the oldest book on writing to survive to the present day. But as it turned out, I didn’t make it to Poetics right away.

Instead, the selected passages from Plato’s Republic that prefaced Poetics stole my attention from the rest of the book—particularly the first sentence: “We must begin by controlling the fable-makers. . . .”

America’s culture is in the midst of rapid changes right now. Even in my relatively short lifetime (I turned 19 in March), I’ve seen drastic cultural shifts. The apologetics curriculum I went through in homeschool was no longer applicable by the time I ended up at community college. Ten years ago, college students debated the existence of God. Now, they debate the existence of reality.

This rate of change isn’t unprecedented, and it’s not really surprising to me either. But what is surprising is how few people look to stories as the solution. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that—our culture, even in Christian circles, often sees stories as little more than entertainment.

But that understanding of stories is simplistic at best—and is often deeply dangerous.

G. K. Chesterton, the great Christian theologian and fantasy writer, argued that fairy tales are essential reading for children because they “accustom [children] . . . to the idea that these limitless terrors [have] a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

Or, as C. S. Lewis put it, “Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. . . . Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.”

In other words, the vicarious experiences we have through reading prepare us for the conflicts we will face in reality. And this is exactly why Plato said that controlling society begins “by controlling the fable-makers.”

I don’t think fiction should have a clear moral message, in the sense that you read the book and can immediately articulate the point of the story. But I firmly believe that every story, whether intentionally or not, contains a moral message. Just as natural consequences teach a child it’s not smart to run on cement, the results of a character’s actions indicate to the reader what is good and what is evil.

Interestingly enough, that vicarious experience concerned Plato when it came to reading Greek mythology—because if you’ve read anything beyond D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths, you’ve probably caught on that the gods and goddesses aren’t exactly paragons of virtue.

In Plato’s words, “All this [the gods behaving, shall we say, poorly] is inadmissible, whether it was composed allegorically or not. Young people can’t distinguish the allegorical from the non-allegorical, and what enters the mind at that age tends to become indelible and irremovable. Hence the prime need to make sure that what they first hear is devised as well as possible for the implanting of virtue.”

While older readers are able to come at a story with discernment, young readers tend to accept what they’re told without much protest. And this is why reading good stories is so important—especially at a young age.

One of Plato’s concerns is much the same as the dangers facing us today: “Poets and prose-writers make serious bad statements about men—that there are many unjust men who are happy and just men who are miserable, that secret wrongdoing is profitable, that justice is the good of others and our own loss—and so on. We shall have to forbid them to say this, and command them to compose songs and fables to the opposite effect.”

Like in ancient Greece, many storytellers today lie about the nature of goodness, justice, and even humanity. Most of them aren’t doing it intentionally—they were just never taught a clear moral system themselves. But their good intentions don’t change the fact that their stories are deeply dangerous.

In brainstorming for a middle grade fantasy series, I recently read my way through a good chunk of the public library’s children’s fantasy . . . and I was deeply disturbed by what I found. The world of fiction has changed drastically even in the last decade, since I was reading those books as a child. Of course, the world of books has never been perfect, but the popular books I read were generally wholesome stories of adventure, friendship, and heroism.

But the books I read recently had more concerning messages—that your ethnic heritage is the most important part of your identity, that heroes protect the environment at all costs, and that perspective is the only difference between good and evil (that one, I gave up on halfway through). And that’s not even mentioning the muddled mess of gender and sexual ethics (or lack thereof)—in children’s books!

So where have all the fairy tales gone? Where are the wholesome stories, full of innocent delight and devoid of harm?

Our culture is crumbling. Our society is doubting the most basic facts of reality. Our young men and women question whether reality even exists—whether there’s anything solid for them to cling to in this sea of bewilderment.

No one person can shift the trajectory of an entire civilization. But what Plato said over two thousand years ago still holds true—the change starts with the storytellers.

You can’t use logos to argue with a generation who doesn’t believe in reason. You can’t use pathos to sway a society that believes we each have our own truth. You can’t use ethos in a world that is tearing down every God-ordained authority.

But you can use stories.

As C. S. Lewis famously said, communicating theological truths through stories allows the author to steal past the “watchful dragons” of the intellect, entering the mind through the door of the imagination instead. This is precisely what makes stories so powerful—and so dangerous.

Much as I wish we could control the fable-makers, we can’t. Freedom of speech is too precious for that. But that does leave us with a conundrum. If we can’t control the fable-makers, then how are we to stand against the seismic shifts our culture is experiencing?

The answer I’ve come to is this: we fight stories with stories.

In an ideal world, we’d be able to shelter our children from stories that contain false (or non-existent) moral systems. But as a voracious reader myself, I know that simply isn’t possible. There’s no way my parents could have pre-read every childhood book. And yes, I read some books that I probably shouldn’t have—books that didn’t do much for my moral imagination.

And I survived, not because we discussed every book, not because I analyzed the worldview of every story I read—but because my parents ensured I read enough good stories to counteract the bad.

And I believe that’s the answer to the crisis facing both our culture and the world of fiction today.

It’s inevitable that children be exposed to the evils of the world. Even if they were completely sheltered from the world around, they’d still have their own sinful nature to grapple with. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “Fairy tales . . . are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.”

Rather, as I quoted earlier, fairy tales—and all good stories—teach children “that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

And that’s one of the reasons I write. Part of it is just that God made me to love the exploration of fictional worlds—but the reason I’ve chosen to embrace the added challenge of publication is that I’ve experienced firsthand the dearth of good fiction in the world.

I’ve been the child broken by the discovery that a beloved author stands for everything I stand against. I’ve been the teenager wandering through the young adult section in desperate search of something more gripping than Jane Austen, but without graphic sexual content.

And I want something better for children and teenagers in that same place.

As C. S. Lewis famously said to his friend and fellow Inkling J. R. R. Tolkien, “If they won’t write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves.” And that’s the conclusion I’ve come to over these last few years—and so have many others, as proven by the recent upswing in Christian fantasy.

Not all of us are called to write. It’s time-consuming and complicated and extremely difficult to do well.

But I do encourage you, whether as a parent or an educator or simply a reader yourself, to support those fable-makers who are striving to make a better world with their stories, whether by purchasing their books, keeping them in your prayers, or just letting them know you enjoyed their books. (Most authors have a contact form on their websites, and unless they’re incredibly famous, they will write back and thank you for reaching out!)

And if you’re not sure where to start in your search for good stories, I encourage you to check out my book review archives and my novels.