Spooky season is one of the best times of year to be a kid who loves monsters.
Suddenly, creatures that usually live in mythology books, ghost stories, and old legends are everywhere. There are witches in windows, ghosts on porches, vampires in stores, and entire aisles devoted to things with claws, fangs, wings, or suspiciously glowing eyes.
I love that.
But one of my favorite things about mythical creatures is imagining what happens when we stop treating them like monsters for a minute.
What if the kraken is not the terrifying thing beneath the water?
What if the kraken is eleven?
What if he has parents, rules, worries, a backpack full of emergency supplies, and absolutely no desire to be the hero of anything?
That is where mythical creatures become especially fun in middle-grade fiction.
Monsters Create Distance From Real Problems
One of the most useful things fantasy gives young readers is a little bit of emotional distance.
Kids deal with complicated things. They worry about fitting in, disappointing people, making friends, losing friends, being away from home, breaking rules, doing something for the first time, and discovering that adults do not always have all the answers.
Those emotions are real. Fantasy lets us explore them somewhere safer.
A kid who feels different from everyone else might connect with a gorgon trying to figure out where she belongs. A child adjusting to a new family might understand a character who has been adopted by werewolves. A nervous kid who depends on rules might recognize themselves in a young kraken who carries a safety handbook everywhere he goes.
The mythology makes the situation magical.
The emotion underneath it stays familiar.
That combination is powerful because young readers do not need a story to lecture them about anxiety, friendship, courage, or belonging. They can watch a character experience those things and recognize themselves naturally.
Let the Creature Be a Kid First
This is the rule I come back to when writing the Mythiverse: The creature can be extraordinary, but the character still needs to feel like a kid. Their mythology should shape their life without replacing their personality.
A griffin can fly. That is interesting. But what does flying mean to a young griffin who suddenly hurts her wing?
A kraken can breathe underwater and has eight arms. Also interesting. But what happens when that kraken gets stranded somewhere without access to the ocean? That is where the character begins.
The magical trait creates possibilities, but the problem gives it meaning.
Kip Is a Kraken, but That Is Not His Real Problem
In Kraken a Smile, Kip is a young kraken from the Deep. He knows the rules. He has studied the Kraken Safety Handbook. He carries emergency supplies. He understands currents, surface dangers, and what he is supposed to do when something goes wrong.
Then a magical current throws him somewhere completely unfamiliar.
Kip initially thinks he has found water and therefore found safety. But instead, he has landed in a landlocked freshwater lake, far from the ocean and even farther from home.
Being a kraken suddenly creates as many problems as it solves. Kip can walk on land, but he still needs to submerge regularly. His body is built for a world he is no longer in. His beloved handbook cannot possibly contain instructions for every strange thing he encounters.
Then he meets Pip, a young griffin with an injured wing who is also trying to get home.
A kraken who needs water and a griffin who can’t properly fly are not an obvious adventure team.
Which is exactly why I wanted them together.
The mythology creates the problem, but their friendship becomes the heart of the story.
Mythical Creatures Let Kids See Strength Differently
Mythology is full of creatures traditionally described by what makes them dangerous. Kraken destroy ships. Gorgons turn people to stone. Werewolves transform into beasts. Vampires have fangs.
But middle-grade stories give us the chance to ask different questions. What does this creature love? What scares them? What rules did their parents teach them? What makes them laugh? What do they misunderstand about other creatures?
What happens when the thing everyone else thinks makes them powerful is not useful for the problem in front of them? That is when a monster stops being a monster and becomes a character.
Spooky season may give us an excuse to fill the world with creatures, magic, folklore, and things that go bump in the night. But I think mythical creatures make wonderful middle-grade heroes all year long.
Especially once we let them be kids.
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