The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

• Genre: Fiction; young adult fantasy
• Originally Published: 2019
• Reading Level/Interest: Grades 8-12
• Structure/Length: 13 chapters with additional chapters representing the protagonist’s discovered text, The Ten Thousand Doors; approximately 374 pages; approximately 12 hours, 20 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: The novel follows January Scaller, a 17-year-old girl living in Vermont during the early 20th century. January discovers a book that tells stories of magical doors to other worlds, and as she reads, she realizes that these doors are real and that her own life is entangled with them. The central conflict revolves around January’s journey to uncover the truth about her own past, her family’s connection to these doors, and her determination to explore the possibilities and worlds that lie beyond them.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Racial and gender prejudice and discrimination; animal cruelty; violence and murder; loss of parents; involuntary institutionalization; supernatural elements
• Please note: As this novel contains an embedded narrative with a very similar title, the following conventions will be used throughout this Teaching Guide to distinguish between the two texts: References to “the novel” and chapter numbers without titles affixed refer to Harrow’s novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January; references to “the embedded text” and chapters labeled “The Ten Thousand Doors” refer to the story-within-the-story that January reads throughout the novel.