“a beautifully bonkers masterpiece” (Daniel Love)
Jinny is a young girl who is always in trouble. She has her big furry cat Frumpy and her beloved floppy hat Hatty for company, but her mind is often looking for ways to escape. On the borders of sleep, she experiences delightful flying and lucid dreams, but also terrifying tunnels and a swirling black void. And even the flying can easily get out of control when it takes her to faraway oceans in a body that keeps changing size.
With Hatty’s help, and to Frumpy’s benefit, she learns how to control her imagination, how to appreciate these extraordinary experiences rather than being frightened by them, and how to be nicer and kinder, even to her horrid brother. The story inspires young readers and their parents to talk about odd experiences and things that happen in the night—to explore the antics of our own minds, not just to ignore them, fear them, or brush them away.
Sue Blackmore is a psychologist, lecturer, and writer best known for her book The Meme Machine (1999) and the textbook Consciousness: An Introduction (4th edition 2024, coauthored with her daughter and now publisher Emily Troscianko). She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth, UK.
Her research interests includes memes and evolutionary theory, consciousness, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, free will, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, psychedelics and other drugs, spirituality, and meditation. She has written more than sixty academic papers and over a hundred contributions to books, and her work has been translated into twenty other languages. She has practised Zen for forty years and plays in a samba band.
This is Sue’s first published work of fiction. The book ends with a section called “The real-life Jinny Jana”, in which she sets out what we know about the science and spirituality of Jinny’s experiences.
The book’s first review is by sleep specialist and lucid dreaming teacher Daniel Love, who calls it “a book that manages to make dreaming feel both realistic and magical at the same time”:
If you’ve ever had a child frightened by nightmares or fascinated by the mysteries of sleep, this is the book to give them. It doesn’t treat dreams as silly nonsense or mere entertainment. Instead, it presents sleep as a landscape of transformation—a place where fear, curiosity, and imagination all mingle.
You can read Daniel’s full review at https://www.thelucidguide.com/post/book-review-jinny-janas-giant-journeys-lucid-dreaming-book-for-children
The book was officially launched at The Ivybridge Bookshop in October 2025.
You can watch Sue and Emily talking about the book on the day after its launch here:
Here’s Sue reading from the beginning of the book:
Here’s Emily reading a scary part of Chapter 6:
And here’s a very mini clip from the launch itself, of Sue describing Hatty the hat:
Where to find it:
Jinny Jana is available as an ebook or paperback on Amazon UK or US (or search for “blackmore jinny jana” on any other marketplace).
If you decide to read it, do get in touch to let us know what you made of it, via an Amazon review or the contact form.
Here’s the beginning of Chapter 1 if you’d like to give it a try.
