Courage. Belonging. Imagination. The coming-of-age story that we've all been waiting for.
Have you ever stared up at a tree and imaged that it was a castle? Or looked at dragonfly and dreamt of riding it? What if you were so small that grass blades were like trees? So small that you'd never even seen the sky?
Right now I'm writing and illustrating a kid's book about a race of miniature people, and my mind is teeming with ideas. It's an illustrated middle-grade novel. It’s also a coming-of-age story about identity.
“The world was hazy and green, yet Bat knew that somewhere up there was a great blue space called Sky. He had been there. It was true.”
In a world where humans are two centimetres tall, society is built on fear: fear of anything different, fear of curiosity itself. That’s just the culture of the Cattenveldt clan, a clan that lives below the grass, using snail shells for houses and caterpillars for pack horses. However, for Bat Brikson, a twelve-year-old boy with a brain that’s exploding with questions, the narrowmindedness of his clan is like a prison. He’s a misfit, and maybe he’ll never belong. He knows he’s destined for something more. He believes he’s destined for greatness.
Bat is determined to find the mysterious enemy clan, the Drakkonbarqs. Curious and unafraid, he flies away on his pet moth to discover a world he never knew existed, where villages and fortresses are hidden in the treetops and adventuring heroes undertake desperate raids on dragonflies. For the first time in his life, he discovers trees and sky and sees the world from above. It turns out, however, that he wasn’t just searching for the Drakkonbarqs. Bat’s quest was also a search for identity. As he discovers the Drakkonbarqs and starts to become one of them, Bat’s whole understanding of the world is turned on its head, and he doesn’t know who he is anymore. Is this new world really the paradise he dreamed of? Will he ever return home? Will he ever belong?
Drakkonbarq - a novel
Ultimately, the story of Drakkonbarq asks questions that aren’t easy to answer. Can anyone ever fit in? Is there more to the world than what we see? Drakkonbarq approaches these questions in a remarkably creative way. I bet you you’ll be entranced by the magical world of this illustrated novel.
But for now? Well for a start, I've got to finish writing it.
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