Having lived several lives on three continents - in Indonesia, Holland, and Vermont - Wouter Nunnink of South Burlington has distilled his experiences in a recently published book for teens, "The Sound of the Gong," the first of a planned trilogy called "Ba El Shebub's Gift Awakens." It is a fantasy tale with modern children as the heroes and a magical time span that ranges from ancient days to the present. Nunnink uses the adventures of his early years, his knowledge of children as a parent and a long-time teacher, and his interest in world history to comment on individual heroism and current events.

In "The Sound of the Gong," Aarvid, 11, and his sister Mona, 9, decide one day to explore an ancient windmill near their home. In the darkness, they persist through cobwebs, creepie crawlies, and stone barriers until Arvid comes across a magical tome, which transports him into a timeless place and shrinks his body for easy locomotion. Aarvid's adventures demonstrate his pluck and courage and show the reader a universe in which all of human history is connected to an ancient battle between Good and Evil. We find Aarvid becoming an unwitting but major player on the side of the Good. Meanwhile Mona, searching for her brother, demonstrates her own virtues of persistence and bravery.

"My magic realm allows people to live hundreds of years and see history's similarities," he says. "We always seem to be trapped in a one-sided view. There are other ways to perceive reality than ours."

Nunnink was born into a Dutch-Indonesian family on a rubber plantation on the island of Java - just in time for the outbreak of World War II. When he was an infant, the Japanese rounded up all who were Dutch and Dutch-related. His father was sent to Japan to work as a laborer, and his extended family went to a prison camp. Nunnink remembers how his mother would steal leaves and snails at the prison and make snail soup for the family. He remembers eating the soup, throwing it up, and wanting to eat it again because he was so hungry "Two more weeks of that war and I would have died," says Nunnink.

But the violence and turmoil did not end for the family after the war ended. Then they were imprisoned again - this time by the Indonesians - during the country's battle for independence. Although they finally returned to their plantation, they were harassed by roving gangs of thugs. In 1951, Nunnink's younger brother Frankie stepped on a nail and died of tetanus. His father had tried to drive to Jakarta, the nearest city, to get medications, but he was stopped by military roadblocks and never made it through.

The child heroes in Nunnink's book are brave and resilient, a fact about children that he learned first hand. When he was eleven years old, he was sent to a Dutch school in the city of Bandung. The trip from home by himself meant a 5 - 8 hour drive from this plantation on the island of Sumatra to a boat landing, three days on the boat to Jakarta on the island of Java, negotiation of the big city's crowds to get to the airport, and buying his ticket for a rickety DC-3. He lived with his aunt in Bandung for two years and then for a time with the Salvation Army. In 1955, he was sent to school in Holland, and the rest of the family followed in 1956.

The Vermont connection? The Nunninks explored settlement possibilities in Africa, but when the Baptist Church in Burlington joined an ecumenical group to help refugee families come to the United States and offered to sponsor them, the family chose Burlington. The family arrived in Vermont in 1960, when Nunnink was 19; his surviving brothers Karl and Chris were 13 and 7. After graduation from UVM, he taught at Rice High School for a year, Edmunds Middle School for a year, and then at Hunt Middle School as a science and math teacher for 29 years. He married his wife, Julie, in 1966, and they have raised two sons and a daughter. Retired from teaching, since 1998 Nunnink has been working at IBM.

A dozen years ago, after a conversation with an 11 year-old friend, Nunnink started to put together his on-going efforts to reach the children in his classes with his own childhood experiences and his sense of history: Fantasy and magic, he realized, could help him send a message about dealing with challenges by yourself. Then, he says, he worked backwards to justify the magic and build his imaginative universe. "It just kept coming," he says. "Everything really started to click while I was recovering from my double knee replacements."

Planning two other books in his series, Nunnink sees his writing "as a whole other job." He wants to convey how history repeats itself, how people demonize others over the ages in the same way that the Dutch and the Indo-Dutch were demonized in Indonesia. "All Islamists, for example, are not alike," he says. "By treating them this way, we reinforce the fanatics." He also wants to describe the resilience of children. "Everyone has magic within him," Nunnink says. This magic helps you make your own choices, take a stand, be able to resist others, and make positive changes in the world."

Use the Google search engine to find more information about Wouter Nunnink and his novel.

Barbara Leitenberg writes on senior issues for the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging. This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press.