David Petersen is the award winning author and artist of Mouse Guard, which you can read more about here. He is also a published childrens author, and currently resides in Michigan, where he grew up. I recently had a chance to speak with him about the Mouse Guard series, and where it’s headed.

The anthropomorphizing of Mice and woodland creatures isn’t a new concept, but it’s rarely a bad one. So many series from CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, to Brian Jacques’ Red Wall have chronicled the struggles of talking animals, and captured the hearts and minds of readers for decades. Never, in my experience, has anyone done such a brilliant job of visualizing this concept, as David Petersen does with Mouse Guard.

The Crooked Man is a story of salvation in spite of sin, rooted in the deep, dark, often uber-religious countryside of this nation. We have a history of using religion for our own purposes, which run far contrary to those of the Lord. However, the heroes in this story are seeking not only redemption, but also literal life saving salvation through the power of forgiveness.

Jurassic Park has always been a series about man’s control over nature: his own, and the natural world around him. We know there were dinosaurs, and we know that they’re gone now (for the most part). Theories abound on not only what happened to them, but when they were here, and where they came from. Here we see a story moving beyond the “What if?” and into the “What now?”.

I see this book as a way to produce genuine interest in those not normally interested in what the Bible has to say. Will it anger the conservative portion of the church? Sure. But that’s what they’re best at: being angry. No “sinner” or “heathen” is going to look at this book and deem it too racy for Sunday school. It’s our job to condemn the works of others…right?

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