Matterhorn books provide heroic adventures for kids
The Matterhorn books began as bedtime stories Mike Hamel made up to tell his four kids. He was concerned that his third son, Matthew, might feel left out, sandwiched between the older brothers he couldn't keep up with and a younger sister. So he created Matterhorn, an adventurer that his boy could aspire to become, a hero who travels through time and space to save the world.
"I wanted to infect him with this vision of himself," said Hamel, a Colorado Springs, Colo., freelance writer.
But it didn't take long for his other kids to hear the stories and ask for characters of their own. Soon, Matterhorn, Aaron the Baron, Nate the Great and Princess Jewel were taking adventures together. Hamel wove quirks of his kids' personalities - say, a love of spicy foods or a good sense of direction - into their heroic characters "to give them a sense of who they were and what they could grow up into," he said.
The real-life Matterhorn is 28 and about to graduate with a master's degree in business administration, and now the bedtime stories he inspired have turned into the Matterhorn the Brave series for tween readers. The first six books were published by Living Ink Books in 2007, and the final two are due out later this year.
"It's not every day you're immortalized in a book," said Aaron "the Baron" Hamel, 32.
In the books, he's a 13-year-old gadget-whiz who's prepared for anything, and in life he's the owner of an electrical contracting company and the father of two. He looks forward to reading the books to his own kids.
"The stories now are a lot more elaborate than I remember as a kid, but the gist of the adventures is the same," he said.
Matterhorn the Brave books are a blend of adventure, fantasy and science fiction. There are sword fights, characters that includes leprechauns, sasquatch and merpeople and time travel to various lands and centuries, accompanied by heady physics discussions of how it all works.
"Kids have enough reality. I want to help them escape," Hamel said. "I can have conflict and struggle, but it doesn't have to be dark."
Matterhorn and his comrades are "travelers" who are sent on missions together to places such as medieval Ireland, ancient Egypt and the Greenland ice cap, and Hamel takes pains to accurately portray the history, geography and setting of each locale.
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Hamel kept his own kids in mind when he wrote the stories, and pointedly tried to appeal to reluctant readers. Thus, the books are chockfull of action, with short chapters and short sentences that move the stories along quickly. And there's no romance.
His publisher is Christian, and there's language about "serving the Maker" in the books, but Hamel maintains that although there's a battle between good and evil, there's nothing specifically Christian about the Matterhorn series. He doesn't intend to preach; he wants to entertain.
"If an author has to stop and tell you his message, then that's a failure," Hamel said.
Instead of religion, he wants to impart character to his readers. The heroes of the books aren't superheroes, but rely on bravery, friendship and honesty to complete their missions.
In an interesting twist, the child heroes become adults while they travel on their missions. It makes their exploits more believable, and allows readers to imagine a version of themselves to grow into, as they follow a self-doubting middle-schooler learning to become a knight.
"He knew our personalities and temperaments growing up, and that was evident in our characters," Aaron Hamel said.
But Mike Hamel points out that his characters don't slavishly copy his kids. For instance, Nate the Great is an aboriginal Australian.
"He took it from a personal level and turned it into something universal," said Matthew Hamel.
BILL REED