Example book · For Maya, age 15
Maya Mends Harrow Bridge
The bridge to her village is falling apart and the adults have given up. Maya hasn't.
Start a story like thisAbout the story
Harrow sits on the far side of a canyon, and the only way across is a rope-and-gear bridge built two hundred years ago by people nobody remembers. Lately it groans. Last month a whole plank fell into the mist.
The village council votes to let it fall and move everyone down the mountain. Maya Ortega, fifteen, has been taking things apart since she could hold a screwdriver, and she thinks the old gears can be made to turn again. Nobody asked her. She has eleven days before the move, a tool belt, a notebook full of drawings, and a grandfather who knows more about the bridge than he lets on.
What she finds under the planks changes what Harrow thinks it knows about the people who built it, and about her.
What Luis told us
This is all it took to start. We followed up with a few questions by email, then wrote the story.
"She fixed our dishwasher with a video and a butter knife. Stubborn in the best way. Hates hearing that something can't be done."
Everything that came with Maya's book
Every book includes all of this. Share one piece or all of them, with whoever you like.
The full printed book
248 pages, bound, with Maya's name on the cover. It arrived in about 2 to 3 weeks.
A story written for Maya
The dishwasher repair made it into chapter 2, more or less. Her stubbornness is what keeps the village from giving up.
The audiobook, in her dad's voice
Luis recorded his sample on a lunch break. Maya says it's strange hearing her dad say the word "gearwright" two hundred times, and she listens anyway.
A version to download
The same book as a PDF and as a Kindle file, for a phone, a tablet or an e-reader.
A short video summary
About 3 minutes. Maya posted it for her friends.
A dedication and a foreword
For Maya, who has never once believed "it can't be fixed."
Luis's foreword is about the first thing Maya ever took apart: his alarm clock, when she was six.
Share it the way you want
Luis shared everything with Maya and her mom, and the video with her grandparents in Monterrey.