Agnes and the Forbidden Mountain

From the afterword: "I want to thank my children for being the inspiration for the main theme of the book. Neither of them are downright studious types, which can be quite frustrating for parents (ahem, for me) when practicing homeschooling at first.

Although none of them seem to be future Nobel Prize aspirants, I can already see their great human qualities - I would almost be afraid to say gifts. These are things that they will not show at the pageant and would not get any marks at school, but they are important for life and can enrich not only themselves, but also countless people in their surroundings, unless they trample on these qualities at the expense of something else.

I am convinced that we all have such a gift within us. And I find it a shame how many of us come out of school feeling like we are useless or don't know what to do with ourselves.

I believe that developing and nurturing what makes each of us special is the way we can make the world around us more beautiful. "

How was the book written?

How to make sense of your time here on earth, which is so ridiculously short? How to follow the voice of your heart? How can we not cling to all that we have here that we've only borrowed for a little while? How to find happiness in the mundane everyday? How to awaken kindness to your own body? And how to take care of your soul and not get hurt?

I longed to write a story,

that both children and adults would understand, that would be suspenseful and that readers would not be able to put the book down, that would be wise but not too wise, that would make them laugh as much as it would make them cry.

And so Agnes was born in my mind. A little girl from the Magreya forest tribe on the island of Baulu. Tiny and fierce, poised and bold. Yet it carries a seed of uncertainty that will eventually play out the colourful chimes of the story.

I continued writing the book in the evenings in Spain while volunteering on farms and finished the manuscript in the Czech Republic during the coronavirus quarantine. I feel that the imprints of the energy of the places where the book was written are evident in it.

What does the book look like?

Messages from CHILDREN readers