Scouts Get Their Literary ‘Harry Potter’ Moment With a Nod to Steven Spielberg and a TED Talk

The celebrated motto of Scouting America – formerly known as The Boy Scouts of America – is “Be Prepared.” The Young Adult literature market, which has been valued at over $11 billion, should duly be prepared for the prospect of a new book series next May that YA fans anticipate could join the ranks of “The Hunger Games” and “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” in the pantheon of teen fiction bestsellers: the “Order of the Dragon Slayer” series. The first book in the three-volume series, “George Goodwin, Dragon Slayer: A Scouting Legend”, written by Candace Lee and Eric Newman, is being published next May by WaterBrook & Multnomah, a division of Penguin Random House. It chronicles the story of a 12-year-old Scout in West Virginia battling a dragon in a modern re-telling of the medieval legend of St George, the patron saint of England, who beheaded the monster with his sword.The Scouts have a long literary pedigree. Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell was heavily inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and during their research, Newman and Lee found a drawing by Lord Baden-Powell of a Scout slaying a dragon contained in the organization’s 1908 founding document, neatly echoing their novel’s plot. It’s high time, the authors argue, for Scouts to be the subject of their own YA opus. “Neither Candace nor I grew up in the Scouts,” Mr. Newman told the Sun, “but we just think they’re awesome. It’s a 50 million strong community around the world and for us it’s time that Scouts had their Harry Potter moment in pop culture.” Recent reports suggest that Scouting America is facing its own political challenges. The organization is rebuilding after emerging from bankruptcy in 2023 related to a giant settlement with abuse victims, and it’s taken heat for admitting girls as of 2017. In a draft memo to Congress, War Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed that the Pentagon end its longstanding ties with Scouting America on the grounds it “no longer supports the future of American boys.” Yet Ms. Lee and Mr. Newman believe Scouts remain a cut above their peers. “There are things that maybe your average 14-year-old wouldn’t necessarily be able to know how to do through what they learned at school but through scouting – they’re making movies, they know how to bandage a wound or have interesting knowledge about geology,” said Ms. Lee. Ms. Lee and Mr. Newman, who are both based at Tulsa, Oklahoma, have a background in screenwriting, primarily for Impact Productions, a film and television company which specializes in faith-driven productions. They first got the idea for the “Order of the Dragon Slayer” series in 2010. “We were working on a screenplay for a film and there was a character of a Scout,” recalled Mr. Newman. “It didn’t make the final cut of the film but we thought it would be fun to do a real dangerous story with a Scout at the center and a patrol of friends. Then a dragon just came to us as a lightning bolt of inspiration.” But they soon realized their story was more suited to the page than the screen. “We had some amazing believers in the script but we realized there was more than one story, there’s a whole world of stories here,” said Ms. Lee. “The best way to lay the groundwork for that world and for these heroes is in a novel so we pivoted into turning it into a book series.”But ironically, since they switched their scouting swashbuckling from film to book, the authors drew inspiration from 1980s-era Steven Spielberg movies. “We both grew up ‘Goonies’ at heart,” said Mr. Newman, referencing the beloved 1985 film “The Goonies,” based on a story by Mr. Spielberg and directed by Richard Donner. “We loved those early Spielberg films where the danger is real and big and at the center of this grand adventure is a young boy or girl and their group of friends.” According to Ms. Lee, their series distinctively sets such a story in a 21st century context: “It’s mashing up that nostalgic ‘Goonies’-style adventure with the big fantasy element. I do think that sets it apart – it’s not happening in some mystical world. It’s happening right here.”Yet while Ms. Lee and Mr. Newman might have had one eye on the past for their thrilling escapades, they were shaped by present-day takes on young adulthood. “When you’re telling a dragon-slaying story, there’s going to be a classic hero’s journey but we also knew we wanted to sharpen the theme,” said Ms. Lee. “In the middle of working on this we came across a TED Talk called “The Demise of Guys” [by Philip Zimbardo] that was focusing on a crisis, specifically in young men. All these troubling stats stirred us – suicide rates, flailing in education, so many different struggles young men were facing.” Added Mr. Newman: “That TED Talk was talking about the immersive world of online gaming and pornography and how it’s capturing the imaginations of a generation of young men and creating new barriers for them to mature into successful adulthood. It was such a compelling question and that’s what we based the themes around.”The TED Talk from 2011 contrasted findings in a 2012 Baylor University study on Scouts that the authors read which painted a rosier picture of young men’s wellbeing. “What was amazing is that when you held these two [studies] together it was almost like a parallel reversal,” said Ms. Lee. “They are sort of a leadership factory in the works where this amazing character-shaping was happening and turning the tide and going against the current trends… the graduation rates of young people who were in scouting were 90 percent versus what else we were seeing and the suicide rates within the scouting group was so reduced from ‘The Demise of Guys’ portrayal.” Unsurprisingly, the Scouts welcome the “Order of the Dragon Slayer” series. “This story taps into what Scouting is all about and will light a spark in every young reader,” Scouting America said in a statement. The TV host and adventurer Bear Grylls, who is chief ambassador of world Scouting, writes in the forward to “George Goodwin” that “I always knew Scouts could save the day, but this story takes it to a whole new level!” Ms. Lee and Mr. Newman knew Mr. Grylls’ enthusiasm was truly sincere following a conversation they had with him when the trio were in Israel, making a separate television series about the life of Jesus. “We were wrapping up shooting the TV series with Bear, sitting back and enjoying a big steak on the sea of Galilee,” Mr. Newman said. “He tells us about this book he’d read about a young boy named George who’s a scout who slays a dragon. Candace and I looked at each other like, ‘Wait! What? That’s our story!’, because we hadn’t given him the book. What had happened was we had finished and printed a few copies of the book, given it to a friend and he’d passed it onto Bear at a scouting event.” Mr. Newman adds the coincidences didn’t end there: “In my photo memories, I had taken a picture of a text I had sent Candace in 2013 saying. ‘One day we’re going to work with Bear Grylls!’”The first book in the “Order of the Dragon Slayer” series is published next spring with the second installment, which takes place at the Scouts’ National Jamboree in West Virginia, provisionally scheduled for Spring 2027 and the third tome hitting the shelves a year later. They are also developing a film adaptation of the series with producers Mark Ordesky, whose credits include the “Lord of the Rings” franchise, and Shannon McIntosh, a frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator.Using the Scouts as their guides, Ms. Lee and Mr. Newman are determined to give young teens a taste of bygone rollicking literary adventure. “In today’s world sometimes kids look for that sense of freedom and independence and they find it on the internet,” said Ms. Lee. “These are kids who are finding it in the real world with real-life skills.” But setting the action in the here and now, how did the authors manage to avoid their characters succumbing to the temptations of modern technology? “This is set in the present day so there are cellphones,” said Mr. Newman, “but our heroes end up getting trapped in a coal mine and cellphones don’t work there. This is a screen-free adventure!”

Scouts Get Their Literary ‘Harry Potter’ Moment With a Nod to Steven Spielberg and a TED Talk

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