Story Behind the Story
by Jaleigh Johnson
The story behind THE SECRETS OF SOLACE is as simple as this: I love museums. I always have. To me, they are windows to times and places that are gone now, attempts at preserving things that need to be remembered. Several years ago, I visited the Louvre in Paris, France. What a fascinating place. You step into a big glass pyramid, walk down a turning stairway, and there you are, with paths to cavernous, connected rooms and thousands of artifacts waiting to be explored.
As I walked through each room, night began to fall, and the windows turned dark. The museum was open later than usual that night, and as the crowds began to thin and my footsteps echoed on the floors, I began to feel as if I was in a different world. I could have explored for ages.
My mind always being in one world or another, after that visit I began to think about the idea of a museum filled with objects preserved from different worlds. Who would build such a place and why? That’s how I came up with the idea for the archivists, the dedicated men and women who have made it their life’s mission to study and preserve the objects from other worlds that fall in the meteor storms in Solace. They collect objects and store them in vast, underground museums deep in the mountains. Some of these objects are beautiful, some scientific, and some of them feel like magic. All of them are worthy of being preserved and remembered, but in such a large museum, sometimes things get…lost.
It’s up to my protagonist, Lina Winterbock, a lost girl herself, to find them. She teams up with a brave, resourceful boy named Ozben, and their adventures and choices could end up changing their world forever. Because every object, no matter how small, has a purpose, and every person, no matter how small they may feel, is important.
Bio:
JALEIGH JOHNSON is a lifelong reader, gamer, and moviegoer. She loves nothing better than to escape into fictional worlds and take part in fantastic adventures. She lives and writes in the wilds of the Midwest, but you can visit her online at jaleighjohnson.com or on Twitter at @JaleighJohnson.
So what makes Guess How Much I Love You HEART ART? Look at the interactions between the characters, the sense of play, the wonderful gestures. Also notice the fine ink line and delicate watercolor. There's a reason this book has become a classic!
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