Introducing Kids to Christian Heroes
A reprint of an author profile on Dave and Neta Jackson that was published in Christian Library Journal in 1997.
Where can children find heroes? Some look to cartoon action figures and others to athletes and movie stars. Still, others have no one to admire or aspire to. Children need positive role models to give them hope and an example of good character. Where can they find such heroes?
Dave and Neta Jackson, award-winning authors and coauthors of over 75 books, seek to fill this void by writing books that children love to read and offer them heroes they can admire and emulate through the Trailblazer Series.
Bread and Butter
Growing up, both Dave and Neta enjoyed their families’ tradition of reading books aloud, including classics such as Black Beauty and the works of C.S. Lewis and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Neta pursued horse books, and Dave devoured the writings of Joseph Conrad and Jack Landon. These experiences instilled within them the love of children’s literature, yet neither planned to be writers.
Neta enjoyed drawing horses. Then in junior high, she wrote stories to go with the pictures. As a senior, she won first place in a Scholastic short story contest. This award directed her to earn an English degree.
Dave planned to be a chemistry teacher. Then someone talked him into joining the college newspaper staff, and his teacher inspired him to consider a writing career.
Dave and Neta met at Multnomah School of the Bible and were married in October 1966. The following year, they moved to Elgin, Illinois, where they worked as editors for several Christian publishers. They also wrote numerous articles as freelancers.
By 1985, the Jacksons dreamed about writing books as full-time freelancers. They had already published a few books by this time. Living Together in a World Falling Apart: A Handbook on Christian Community (now out of print), their first book, appeared in 1974. To launch their freelancing career, they first worked as coauthors with expert resource people. One such project became the 1994 Gold Medallion winner, Breaking Down the Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife, written with Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein.
“Coauthoring was our bread and butter to get started in the writing business,” explained Dave. “But we were really interested in writing for kids.”
Birth of the Trailblazers Series
In the late 1980s, the Jacksons were asked to dramatize fifteen stories about the sixteenth-century Christian martyrs for a book titled, On Fire for Christ. This research project opened the door to their true passion—writing children’s fiction.
“We got so excited about bringing history to life by using historical fiction,” explained Neta. This experience led them to think about other great Christians and how they could make their stories enjoyable to kids.
Telling children about church forefathers not only intrigued the Jacksons but also caused them to recognize some needs. Though they had both been raised in the church and attended Christian colleges, they didn’t know much about church history. They realized that many in the Christian community didn’t either.
Past and present heroes are also commonly degraded by our culture today; so many people have no heroes, noted Dave. Yet, our society desperately needs the inspiration that good heroes can provide. “And there’s just a wealth of examples of saints from the past who have forged the way and shown us how to live whom we’ve largely ignored or forgotten.” From these reflections, the Trailblazer Series was born.
There’s just a wealth of examples of saints from the past who have forged the way and shown us how to live whom we’ve largely ignored or forgotten.
In writing these books, the Jacksons hope to make the great personalities of the church familiar to kids. They accomplish this by demonstrating, from a child’s viewpoint, how men and women of great faith contributed to the missionary movement or had an impact on society. The authors, however, refuse to place these historical figures on pedestals. They simply seek to show what happens when ordinary people say yes to God and are used by him. Sometimes this means including their mistakes and failures (Attack in the Rye Grass is a good example).
“Honesty about the failures of great people—without tearing them down—helps inoculate children against disillusionment,” explained Dave. “Even the Bible is honest about human failings” (Dave Jackson, “Heroes and Imposters,” Christian Parenting Today, [November/December 1994]: 26–33).
To fit the Trailblazer pattern, the topical characters must have had experience with children in addition to contributing to society or church history. This criterion is sometimes challenging to meet. The authors use historical children as the point-of-view characters in most cases. Still, occasionally, the Jacksons must create a child who would be typical for the story period. The authors then turn to research to find the information needed to develop the characters and the storyline.
Research to Story
The Jacksons use several libraries and the Internet to locate primary and secondary resources on their subjects. For example, to find some details about the Piper airplane that Nate Saint flew (Fate of the Yellow Woodbee), Dave searched the Internet and discovered a Piper Aircraft Club in Pennsylvania. He called the club curator and got the information he needed.
They also do on-site research for a story on occasion. Last summer, they visited Plimoth Plantation, a restoration of the original colony, to do research for their book on William Bradford.
While researching, they seek a “window of opportunity,” which Neta described as “a year or two or three in a person’s life that may best illustrate in a dramatic way what that person’s life is about and what his or her contribution is.” Finding this, they build the story around that period.
Next, they examine historical factors and issues that a child may have faced to create the youngster whose life is changed by the principal character in some way. For the William Bradford story, they considered the historical fact that many people died and that children often grew up with other families. They developed the story by pairing this information with the lack of sense of belonging that a child may have felt.
The research and writing of an individual book is the primary responsibility of one member of this couple team. Each works on a book separately, with each of them producing one book every six months. Neta and Dave also work together, helping each other brainstorm when one gets stuck and critique each other’s work.
Working full-time as freelance writers, 9:00 to 6:00 each workday, Dave and Neta have fulfilled their dream. They continue to write their bread-and-butter nonfiction projects. Yet, their passion continues to be writing children’s historical fiction.
“With the Trailblazers, we really feel like we’ve made a contribution to what’s available to children,” said Neta. “We get a great deal of satisfaction knowing that we’ve made available to kids real heroes in a way that is easily digestible and fun to read.”