Goodreads asked Wanda Kay Knight:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Wanda Kay Knight I have always wanted to write an allegorical tale for young people—because those types of stories mattered to me when I was young—and they still do. I also wanted to consider some of my own questions about life and the journeys we take as well as the consequences of the paths we choose. You know, those question like what happens if we make the wrong choice when we are making important decisions? What happens when we decide to get lazy and take the easy way out? What happens when we misunderstand the purpose of a certain path?
Now, quite frankly, I am not a philosopher and certainly don’t have the answers to those questions. I’m just a person who wonders how in the world I got from Point A to Point C without passing through Point B when my intension was to go in another direction altogether.
So, in an effort to consider these questions, ideas, and mishaps, I took eight cousins on a journey. Now, I don’t think the story line is an obvious allegory—it is my hope that it is simply an easy to read tale of magic and adventure—but, for me, while I was writing—I was also considering the impact of the journeys we take and the paths we choose.

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