Ja­nine Mendes-Fran­co

"How many of you–chil­dren or adults–have ever dreamed of fly­ing?" This was writer Ann Marie Mey­ers' ques­tion to the au­di­ence at the launch of her chil­dren's book Up in the Air at Pa­per-Based Book­shop last week­end.The nov­el, tar­get­ed at nine-to-12-year-olds, is in the fan­ta­sy/ad­ven­ture genre that chil­dren of this age love so much.It tells the sto­ry of Melody, who has al­ways dreamt of fly­ing. One day, she launch­es her­self off a park swing with the in­ten­tion of mak­ing it as far as the sand­box. In­stead, she finds her­self land­ing in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent realm, the mag­i­cal land of Chimeroan, where even the wildest dreams come true.

The hero­ine earns her wings–but, as in any good sto­ry, there's a catch: Melody can't out­fly her prob­lems, and in her case there's one loom­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly large: the guilt she har­bours about her role in a car ac­ci­dent that has left her fa­ther paral­ysed. Will she choose flight and free­dom? Or will she ac­cept her fam­i­ly's new re­al­i­ty, for­give her­self and open the door to heal­ing?These may seem like heavy themes to pack in­to a chil­dren's nov­el (guilt, self-con­fi­dence, fear, for­give­ness), but they are con­cepts that "tweens" grap­ple with every day.Mey­ers ex­plained that the con­cept man­i­fest­ed it­self one day while she was med­i­tat­ing. "The idea just came to me, but what was strange is that it ap­peared as im­ages, where­as I usu­al­ly think in words." So she did what she said in ret­ro­spect was a very risky thing. "I cut the med­i­ta­tion ses­sion short, went down­stairs to my com­put­er and start­ed writ­ing every­thing down. And then, I got prop­er­ly stuck."

She hadn't wait­ed for the sto­ry to reach its de­noue­ment in her mind, so she spent the next few years try­ing to fig­ure out where the plot should go.Not that she didn't en­joy the process–Mey­ers has al­ways loved writ­ing, she said. She has a de­gree in lan­guages and, af­ter work­ing for sev­er­al years at the Unit­ed Na­tions in New York, she start­ed her own busi­ness, trans­lat­ing le­gal and tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments from French and Span­ish in­to Eng­lish.She be­came in­ter­est­ed in writ­ing con­tent for chil­dren af­ter her daugh­ter, Eliana, was born. "I tried to write pic­ture books, but that re­quires a cer­tain tech­nique and I didn't have it," she said. "But I re­alised I en­joyed writ­ing longer books any­way." The re­sult is 200 pages of mag­i­cal ad­ven­ture that doesn't talk down to chil­dren.

Mey­ers' daugh­ter, now 12, is tes­ta­ment to that. "She liked the book," her moth­er beamed. "I start­ed read­ing it to her when she was nine or ten years old, and she'd al­ways beg for one more chap­ter, so I felt I was on to some­thing."Mey­ers shopped the book around to sev­er­al lit­er­ary agents and got nowhere un­til she de­cid­ed to sub­mit it di­rect­ly to a pub­lish­ing house; Jol­ly Fish Press took it on board and the rest is his­to­ry in the mak­ing.The au­thor is now on an in­ter­na­tion­al book tour that has fit­ting­ly start­ed in T&T, the land of her birth, and will al­so in­clude ap­pear­ances and sign­ings in New York and across Cana­da. She said that start­ing the tour "at home" was both scary and ex­hil­a­rat­ing, but she is look­ing for­ward to pos­i­tive feed­back about the nov­el. Judg­ing from the num­ber of peo­ple whose hands went "up in the air" when she asked her ques­tion at the book launch, that should be much eas­i­er than learn­ing to fly.

You can fol­low @Ann Marie_Mey­ers on Twit­ter, find her on Face­book (face­book.com/An­n­MarieMey­er­sauthor) or on the Web at an­n­marie-mey­ers.com