Featured Titles for Kids: The Unexpected Guest and The Great & the Small
The Unexpected Guest by Ghazal Mousavi
Published by Magink Publishing House
World rights available
Age Range: 5 - 7
The book The Unexpected Guest features stunning illustrations that beautifully depict the limitless possibilities of imagination. The reader is invited to follow along on the journey and explore a world where there are no boundaries or rules.
The day started out like any other, but things quickly took a turn when the unexpected guest, named O, arrived. O brought a sense of wonder and excitement to their mundane routines. O transformed ordinary objects into extraordinary things.
Ghazal Mousavi
Born in 1982 in a family of booklovers, Ghazal has been an advent believer in trying new experiences and reading exciting and adventurous books ever since she was a child growing up in Iran. Now, she shares her passion with all children worldwide by writing children’s books.
The Great and the Small by Andrea Torrey Balsara
Published by Common Deer Press
World Rights Available
Age Range: 13 - 18
Ananda is a troubled teen who feels like a misfit at home and at her new school, and her unusual ability to connect with animals makes her feel like even more of an outsider. Still raw from the death of her grandmother, Ananda's dreams are haunted by a long-buried memory that causes her to push people away.
Fin is a Tunnel rat who lives in the passages beneath the city, in the dark places humans overlook or despise. Orphaned as a pup, he is the nephew of the Tunnel's charismatic leader, the Beloved Chairman, and is willing to do anything to please his uncle, including becoming his lead henchman.
The worlds of humans and rats suddenly collide when Ananda protects Fin during a chance encounter in the market. Neither can foresee how their lives will forever be inextricably linked, but as the Chairman launches a plague war against the humans, both Fin and Ananda wrestle with secrets so terrible that they threaten
their very existence.
Told as mirroring narratives that reverberate with the effects of buried trauma, and informed by historical accounts of plague and dictatorship, this stunning tale examines what it takes to grasp for light in the darkness and survive the threats both beyond us and within us.
⭐ Awards
This modern classic has won the Eloquent Will Award, a Nautilus Book Award, a Literary Classics Award, a Moonbeam Award, and two Dragonfly Book Awards, and is a National Indie Excellence Award and Page Turner Award finalist.
⭐ Reviews
"I enjoyed the honesty of the motivations of the characters and their setbacks throughout the narrative. Social commentary was provided through character voices that were not paternalistic or preachy, and bolstered by the credibility of them being immersed within the web of crisis and triumph that peppers the plot. The development of character from beginning to end was believ- able, with realistic twists that relaxed any sense of contrived messaging. I find it noteworthy that a YA dystopia is couched within our shared human history, rather than a futuristic fantasy world: a valuable takeaway about the treasury of our common global experience to date." — Amazon Review
"This Young Adult fantasy tells two parallel stories; that of the aboveground humans, focusing upon Ananda Blake, a junior-high student who is rebelling against her father, a cancer researcher who experiments on rats; and of the underground civilization of the rats, focusing upon Fin, the young cousin of the rat community’s Beloved Chairman. The novel consists of many short chapters, each introduced either by a quote from one of the journals of the 14th century European Black Death, or a quote from Josef Stalin, identified as one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century. This implies that the novel’s climax will be the rats spreading a modern Black Death, and that, since Stalin was widely known as “Beloved Chairman”, Fin’s uncle is not the kindly leader that he pretends to be." — Amazon Review
Andrea Torrey Balsara is an award-winning children's and young adult author/illustrator, motivational speaker, and energy medicine practitioner. Her passion is to inspire joy through storytelling and energy healing, helping young people and adults to walk “the Hero’s Journey” in real life. She writes and illustrates for young children under her full name, Andrea Torrey Balsara, and for young adults under A.T. Balsara.
