FAQs — Understanding Sparkle Valley
- May 4
- 7 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
THE SPARKLE VALLEY TRILOGY
NOTE - If you’re looking to just get a feel for the bigger picture behind the story, I would start HERE. Below is a more complete breakdown of characters, themes and how it fits together. I’ve also included some links if you want to dig deeper into certain questions.
What is the Sparkle Valley trilogy?
It’s a children's fantasy series that follows Abigail on her journey to a magical world called Sparkle Valley. Simple right? But it’s actually as complex as you want it to be—as complex as the human emotions. As complex as love. Literature is about finding new vocabularies (redescription) so there will never be one right interpretation. (This also applies to life.) So yes, it's philosophical if you want it to be —a three-part meditation on imagination, identity, memory, choice, and love—but it’s also a children's fantasy story. And my ultimate goal always was for my daughter to actually want to read it.
What is the reading order of the books? Each book stands alone, but I would read them in order if you don’t want to miss anything. There are valleys and mountains that reflect Emily’s state, but the series builds. And the final chapter brings it all home.
Are the books just for kids? They were written for kids, specifically, my daughter when she was entering middle school (although they weren’t finished until she was almost graduating college). But I could see how parents and adults might be interested in the philosophy underlying them. It’s kind of like Alice in Wonderland in that it can be read on two levels.
Read MORE on similarities to Alice in Wonderland
Who are the main characters? Abigail is the protagonist. Emily, her "sister" exists in the real world. Other elements include the Beast (It), Inzos (fear), the Powder of Life (creativity), and of course, the Blue Flower (imagination, soul). But I’m just touching the surface here. This is a full world that is as complex as a personality.
Where can I preview the books? Everything is on the website, you can even get three free chapters of the first book.
Now let's talk a little bit about the concept behind Sparkle Valley.
What is Sparkle Valley? We already got into this, but Sparkle Valley is a fantasy land that reflects Emily's imagination. It's a living world inside her mind that her doll, Abigail, is trying to save. And she isn't trying to save it from monsters or the usual enemies. She’s trying to save it from Emily forgetting. Because Emily is growing up and if she forgets about it, the world will disappear. It’s up to Abigail to save it.
So this is all a metaphor? In some ways, of course, in the sense that everything non-fiction can be a metaphor. But there's more to it than that. Because Sparkle Valley is a full-blown psychological map of Emily. Every character, object, conflict, everything there represents something real in Emily. Memory, fear, connection, identity, etc. So the story isn’t the usual fare of good versus evil. It’s more abstract. It’s imagination versus numbness. Abigail is trying to keep imagination alive and Sparkle Valley (and Emily) from being hollowed out by a Beast that counterfeits reality.
What does the trilogy say about growing up? What doesn’t it say? I'm joking, but it is comprehensive psychologically. It chronicles the emotional changes in Emily as she grows up as told through the eyes (mostly) of her doll, Abigail. Everyone changes as they grow up. That's just a fact. You view the world differently. And the process is gradual. You stop noticing certain things that used to excite you, you stop engaging, and ultimately stop feeling. This slow erosion of belief and feeling, and Abigail’s fight to save it, is what Sparkle Valley is ultimately about
Who is Emily really? Emily is the mind behind Sparkle Valley. And she's losing touch with her imagination, and that's causing Sparkle Valley to fall apart. Abigail (her avatar) goes to save it. And her journey reflects Emily’s way back.
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What about Abigail? She's Emily's moral imagination. Much more than just a doll. She fights for Emily, for her imagination. And she does this by not forgetting, and persisting. Even when it hurts, she chooses to stay connected. Her entire existence depends on Emily's attention. Like the Blue Flower.
Read MORE
What about the Beast? Here are the symptoms of the Beast, and that’s where we should start because it does its work on the inside: detachment, distraction, emotional deadness. It’s the numbness you feel after an hour of mindless scrolling. It's not like anything terrible happened, but that hour is lost forever. It's a slow erosion of wonder. Those are the symptoms. But the Beast itself, that’s complicated. It deals with meaning itself, the things that mean something to you. And distorts it. Turns it from life affirming to flattening. It’s the force that sucks the life out of you. And it does it in many different ways and can come at you from many directions. It can kill magic by over-explaining, removing mystery, but its most insidious way is by counterfeiting reality. Hollowing out your world from the inside. By making you think that nothing is worth loving. It’s the force that doesn’t destroy beauty, but rather persuades you that the beauty you once saw was actually never real. As you can probably tell, I hate the Beast.
Read MORE about this scourge.
Why does this world feel so emotional? Because it is. Emotions are basically the architecture of the story. In Sparkle Valley every character is a part of Emily. Fears, memories, hopes. They all have a voice in her mind. For example, Ivana, she is pride and fear of becoming irrelevant; Grandma Doris (memory); The Inzos (fear made visible). The list goes on. It’s a whole psychological map because each character was in a sense created by Emily. Every single one of them speaks to something real about her, with Abigail at the center. So Sparkle Valley isn't escapist at all. It's actually about Emily’s real emotional life.
Read MORE about Ivana
Is there a deeper point here? Imagination isn't childish. And the self, that's not something that just exists as a finished product. You build it. You don’t just find yourself and then that's it. Story over. You keep deciding over and over. It’s about you deciding what you’re going to let go of and what you’re going to keep. And if you’re lucky, you have someone like Abigail fighting for you.
Read MORE about choosing
So is Sparkle Valley is just fantasy? No, it's connected to what's called a thin place. In the story, Emily’s thin place is the Magic Garden, and Abigail’s goal is to keep it from thickening. But thin places can be anywhere. They don’t even have to be places. And they aren’t about escaping either, they’re thresholds. It's like when a song brings back memories of a whole other part of your life that you thought was gone.
Read MORE on Thin Places
So what saves Sparkle Valley? Belief. Emily’s connection to Sparkle Valley exists when she chooses to believe. Ultimately Abigail prevails because Emily doesn't let go of her belief in her. Emily heals by facing her fears, and by choosing to feel even when it really hurts. She grieves what she's lost. She decides to care. Because caring is everything.
Read MORE about how Abigail saves Sparkle Valley with an "impossible choice."
Let's talk a little more about the philosophy behind Sparkle Valley.
What does it mean to say “That's my Sparkle Valley?” It's kind of like saying this is my place, my Blue Flower. It's the world that you make for yourself and it's not necessarily a destination or a place, it's just that part of you that hasn't forgotten how to imagine.
So what is Blue Flower Power? Abigail has it. At its most basic, it’s just the idea that creativity and emotion and imagination are powerful forces. And that these forces don’t go away when we grow up. They’re just out there quietly waiting for us. It's based on the Romantics and specifically Novalis and his Blue Flower. But it also is grounded with a dose of pragmatism. The motto would be something like ”Dream, but do the work.” If you want to break it down, it's four things: Imagination, joy, courage, and balance.
Read MORE about the Blue Flower
What is New Romanticism? It's an updated Romanticism for today’s tech world. It resists the cold technical rationalism and endless self-analysis, but doesn't resort to escapism either. It's about staying human in this world that's speeding up every day and obsessed with efficiency. Balancing wonder and work. To get slogany, New Romanticism isn't about escaping reality, it's about not disappearing inside it.
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What is the issue with “therapeutic culture?” Despite what some people may want you to believe, you’re not just a stack of personality traits or symptoms. There’s more to you. It’s this whole notion of preserving the mystery. Don’t over-explain. This is another way the Beast works. You're not just a puzzle that needs to be solved. Because once it’s solved it’s over. The story ends. The Blue Flower is dead. The Beast wins.
Can you explain the Romantic critique of rationalism in the sentence? Too much knowing kills wonder.
Continue Exploring
If you want the big-picture philosophy
If you want to follow the symbolic characters
If you want the deeper symbolic world
→ The Blue Flower — the inner spark
→ Inzos — fear with a memory
→ The Beast — counterfeits meaning
→ Thin Places — where wonder breaks through
If you want the practical side
Field Notes (Quick Reference)
Concept: Sparkle Valley — imagination as a living, responsive world
Core idea: imagination shapes experience through attention, memory, and choice
Structure: internal world (Emily) expressed as narrative realityCore tension: imagination vs numbness; connection vs detachment
Emily: the source — losing and rebuilding connection to imagination
Abigail: moral imagination — persistence, care, and action
The Beast (IT): detachment, distraction, erosion of meaning
The Inzos: fear made visible; weaken when confronted
Sparkle Valley: psychological map of identity, memory, and emotion
Key mechanism: neglect weakens the world; attention sustains it
The Blue Flower: inner spark — imagination carried into adulthood
The Powder of Life: total creative power; risk of finality and closure
Thin Places: points where inner and outer worlds connect
Growing up: gradual shift in attention, engagement, and feeling
Core risk: loss of wonder through disengagement
Philosophical roots: Romanticism, Richard Rorty, Kierkegaard
Modern pressure: distraction, speed, over-analysis, attention loss
New Romanticism: imagination grounded in action — “dream, but do the work”
Core claim: meaning is sustained through attention, belief, and choice
Guiding line: You don’t lose wonder—you stop choosing it
