BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MALINI IN WHIRLWOOD Welcome to Whirlwood, where the fantastic is real, nothing is quite as it seems, and danger can be found at every turn. Malini dreams of being a queen, and longs to escape her quarreling parents and her bullying classmates. On her 13th birthday, her wish seems to have been granted when she finds a magical book among her mostly disappointing presents. Emblazoned with the image of a mysterious ship, its pages promise excitement, adventure, and a very different life from the one she now leads in her small village in the Himalayan mountains. But when Malini opens the book--against the wishes of her parents—she falls headlong into a world of magic and shape-shifting creatures. Whirlwood is a place that defies all the rules of logic, physics, time, and space, and where Malini’s own thoughts and feelings create reality. Can she escape? Or is she trapped there forever? Malini in Whirlwood is a metaphysical fantasy for YA/Middle Grade, and for children of all ages, with echoes of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. At 58,000 words, the stand-alone story is the first book in a projected trilogy. BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF Malini in Whirlwood Malini, a young girl’s odyssey, begins and ends in India after her journey through the landscape of her psyche. Malini, the protagonist of Malini in Whirlwood, is driven by two feelings: the desire to become a queen to have power over her circumstances and people, and her fear of becoming a bean, her definition of people who lead ordinary, boring lives. As she puts it, “Queens eat, and beans are eaten.” On her 13th birthday Malini, who lives in a town in the Himalayas in India, inherits a magical book. On its cover is an alive picture of a ship; its pages, shaped like doors, are black and blank except for one word emblazoned in light, ‘Whirlwood:’ a word, Malini learns later, that has the power to set anyone who hears it on the path of self-discovery. The gift sparks a flaming desire in Malini to acquire the ship, travel to Whirlwood, escape her bullying classmates, her quarrelling parents and Daadi, her mad grandmother to whom Malini has been less than kind. Daadi dies before Malini enters Whirlwood, a quantum world beyond geography where time and space are bent, and where everything exists simultaneously. In the middle of the night, she embarks on her adventure, accompanied by her dog, Nothing. Malini meets a shape-shifting Magician who spews a river out of his mouth and conjures a boat made of light. When Malini asks him to make her a queen, the Magician metamorphoses into a serpent with two tongues, one of which promises to make her a queen, and the other, a bean. Throughout her adventures Malini doesn’t know which she is going to become, till she learns at the end that it is up to her to fulfill her potential. She could become either, or both, for all contraries coexist in Whirlwood. Malini meets many scary, friendly, and peculiar characters called Fractidians on the boat. Nono is from Malini’s future: he tells her which choices to make to avoid suffering but Malini mistrusts him and does her own thing; Prof. Gbbler, a scientist who debunks feelings, lives in his head, keeps his feet in tight shoes, is a man in the process of becoming a machine; his feet detach themselves from him and become an independent character called Tozy; Thimble, a man in the process of becoming a donkey, is an anxiety-driven being who thinks working hard will solve all his problems; Ender, with a misaligned head and body, who is on a quest for unification, teaches Malini to be courageous and fearless; Mr. Mark, a whining question mark who has lost his point, makes Malini aware of the dangers of self-pity. Malini meets two main characters she perceives to be her antagonists: The first is the half crocodile, half woman Witch of Itch, or Ms. Itch, with a hyena for a pet, a bird/pen for a broom; and the second is a black hole called Mouth with fangs which repeatedly tries to swallow her. Malini eventually discovers that she is her own worst adversary. Her fear of witches, crocodiles, hyenas, black holes, her greed, pride, and anger land her in trouble. It is a challenge for Malini, who lives through her intellect, to encounter characters and events that cannot be comprehended by it. Malini is an anti-heroine on the way to becoming a fearless, courageous, and kind heroine. Told early in her entry into Whirlwood that she is to hug Ms. Itch to become a queen, Malini refuses to do so. Besides, Ms. Itch also has a force field around her that does not allow anyone to get near her. Malini’s unconscious behavior towards The Witch of Itch results in her becoming what she hates most: a crocodile; Nothing turns into a hyena; her dread of the Mouth lands her on its very lip. Her metamorphosis wakes her up to the realization that her thoughts and reactions are responsible for creating these situations, that she can change her reality by changing her mind. Deciding to confront her adversaries bravely, Malini tells the Mouth she is ready to be eaten. She also turns to Ms. Itch to hug her. But before she can do so she must discover that in the Time outside time of Whirlwood, Ms. Itch is Daadi who had waited for Malini in the parallel universe of Whirlwood so that they could forgive each other and reconcile. Her adversaries have helped Malini become a heroine. She hugs her grandmother and in doing so releases her from a curse. \tThe entire boat falls into the Mouth, which turns out to be the Magician’s Serpent Mouth. As the boat descends, celestial music puts all on board to sleep. Malini awakens in her own bed at home, transformed. Having overcome her fears and her cruelty, she has fulfilled part of her potential. Her relationship to her parents and classmates has changed. She is happy to discover she is both a queen and a bean. She still has her magical book and knows that many more adventures await her. \t\t\t\t\t ~