Alana de la Cruz

In early May of 2020,  Alana received a miraculous download of an idea to write a mermaid/pirate adventure tale and completed her manuscript in less than 4 days. In the following weeks, the riots had begun after the George Floyd incident and sparked high emotions that spread like wildfire throughout our nation.  Alana was greatly moved by these riots while she collaborated with her illustrator to create each page with detail and love. At that moment, Alana had yet another idea.

 

Although she had a wonderful idea for a storyline, she also wanted her book to fully incorporate the two most important passions of her heart - gender equality and racial diversity. At that moment, everything just seemed to ignite and flow creatively between Alana and her illustrator. Ashley not only saw the vision of interweaving these two elements in each illustrated page, but fully supported the vision to see the book soar to the highest level possible of creative excellence for a children's book. What followed as a result, was an extremely unexpected popularity of the book within the first few weeks of its release. Only one week after its launch, "The World of Aquadonia: Princess Alana and the Mystical Mermaid Necklace"  had been picked up by twenty 3rd party online book retailers around the world and also picked up by big box retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart.

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Although the lightning fast sales are amazing and continue to grow worldwide, Alana is humbled. She truly attributes the strong launch towards supplying a need in the marketplace for a children's book that centered around an already popular demand for mermaids, and also speaking to the children with a deeper intention to heal our nation of all the division and discord suffered in 2020. Alana knew in her heart that this book mixed all the right ingredients of high entertainment, high creativity, along with a pinch of love, unity, equality and diversity to make a recipe that every child would enjoy and every parent could approve.

 

Alana hopes that "The World of Aquadonia" will touch the hearts of children along with parents and educators alike and spark a movement to model after this fictional underwater world as it is such a great example of a better world and higher standard of character for us all to achieve.