As an eight-year-old in 2013, author Thanael Kanter was quite the chatterbox. His favorite way to start a sentence was with the word imagine . . .
"Imagine a flying car with a holographic steering wheel."
"Imagine a dog collar that translates your dog's thoughts to words you can hear."
Thanael had so many fantastic ideations to share that his mother (and co-author), Lucia, would have to remind him to take bites of his food at the dinner table.
"Imagine a man who wakes up one morning and gold coins fall from his hair . . ." Thanael mused to Lucia one autumn morning in 2013 over a bowl of already soggy Cheerios . . . and then he continued chattering his imaginings as Lucia listened . . . and began typing. Thus was born this whimsical and transcendent fable, The Money Fairy.
It's the chimerical chronicle of an ambitious family man, Armando, in the "Olden Times" living a pleasant life in the fictional Italian Alps village of Cuor della Terra. He awakens one morning to gold coins tumbling from his hair . . .
It's a careening tall tale that whisks you from the Italian Alps to Paris to the Midwest of the United States and from Brazil to the craggy, breathtaking shores of Sicily-all in the span of a bedtime story (and with some time-travel and a dash of multiverse just for good measure). It "breaks the fourth wall" by directly addressing the reader and combines old-world folktale elements with contemporary references. It is an utterly enchanting journey that reminds us how magic all around us-every day-is afoot!
While the authors drop clues as to "what's really going on," there's more than one answer (as in real life) to the mystery of the gold coins!
Meet The Characters
Armando and his wife, Elisa: a content and industrious couple living in Cuor della Terra, Italy with their four children
Elisa's grandmother, Lucia: a tennis champion from Brazil (but before tennis was invented)
Francesco Bugatti: a Sicilian tennis champion who is challenged to a match by Lucia, and falls in love with her
Marco: Armando's brother, who has sailed across the ocean and lives in Illinois
Abraham Lincoln: a friend of Marco's and the sixteenth president of the United States
Giuliano Cantore: a famous calendar savant
Natanieul Gutriey: a famous Parisian weaver
The Puttifurbi: mythical gnomes
The prevailing question, "dear reader," is: Can you figure out "what's really going on"?
(wink, wink)
