I'm excited to announce a new YA fiction series!
Poppy-Dahlia Adventures
Primarily aimed at middle-grade readers, these stories empower kids (especially girls) to embrace travel and see the thought process behind the decision-making process that drives adventure.
The story centers around Anna Dahlia and Zoe Coquelicot. Anna Dahlia is a 6th grader taking her first steps into a more grown-up world. Zoe (Coquelicot, meaning poppy in French) is an energetic 4th grader, making friends with people wherever she goes. Their stories are written to create a narrative around a travel destination, ideally to get kids more engaged on family trips.
But, this isn’t your average read.
One story, written as two books, told from each sister’s perspective.
In the first book, you will read the story from Anna Dahlia’s viewpoint. Then, continue with the second book to increase comprehension, add extra details, and story variations with the same story seen from her sister Zoe’s point of view.
Reading a book twice can dramatically increase reader comprehension. However, encouraging readers to read a story twice can be tough.
Providing the same story from another character’s point of view, bringing a change in perspective, and some alternate storylines will excite readers to take a deeper dive into what they have just read.
The story behind the books
A couple of years back I was picking out a bedtime story for my youngest daughter, Margaux, and she asked for a story about a girl like her. I spent the next week devising characters and circumstances that might make an interesting story and wrote a few short chapters. She thought it was great.
For the next few weeks, we would go on like this. I would write a few chapters during the week and read them to her on the weekend. She would tell me what she liked and what she thought might happen, then I would give it a twist as I wrote over the next week. As a kid, my pop would often tell us bedtime stories he made up on the spot of three characters based on me, my brother, and my sister. I’m better writing things down first.
Eventually, this became a decent story, and Margaux wanted to read it again. This took me by surprise, and I asked why she wanted to read it again so soon. Her teacher had been having all the kids in her class do their reading assignments twice, to promote better reading comprehension. I asked her if that was kind of boring, and she told me that it was a little, but it worked.
Giving this a bit of thought, I realized that the story I had been telling her was mostly from the older sisters point of view, and I thought maybe I could rewrite the story a little to tell it from the younger sisters point of view, so we could keep it interesting. Our process started over, and I told her the same story in a more interesting way.
This project ended up becoming Separated on the Paris Metro. Two young sisters traveling with their cousin, to visit family in France prior to a family vacation. They end up having to take the metro across the city on their own to stay with another family member, and the older sister gets her purse stolen, and becomes separated from her younger sister and cousin.
I had a number of conversations about the stories with my kids, and it seemed interesting to add in some supplemental material at the back. There is a short piece about what to do if you are lost, some French vocabulary related to the story, itineraries based on what the characters in the book might visit on their trip to Paris, character biographies, family trees, a map of Paris detailing locations mentioned in the book, story and chapter summaries to make it easier for caregivers to engage in conversation about the story, and some comprehension questions to engage young readers about themes mentioned in the story.
As I thought about publishing this, it struck me that this could be a series. But this Paris story would be a much better second book in the series. So I set out two write the first book in the series, something a little shorter, and give a good introduction to the characters.
Lost at the Pinnacles, a surprise camping weekend for the two sisters and some family friends started to take shape, and became book 1 of the series.
Read Lost at the Pinnacles by signing up for our mailing list. During the onboarding sequence, you can download a free digital copy of the first book in series: Lost at the Pinnacles. Or you can support our efforts by buying a copy on Amazon.