A mystical children's fable about strength and independence. Follow Pauw as he mends his feathers and learns how to fly.

Welcome to my first ebook, created 2022-2023 for my Dutch family, and I want to share the English version here with you. For the remainder of June I want to provide this epub for free! I will try to make a printed English version available when I travel back to the United States sometime.

The story is a fable about finding strength and independence, with the support of others. The Pauw character was inspired by the peafowl in Molenwijk Wandelpark just across the way. One of the first outstanding and positive things I noticed about the Netherlands when I started visiting in 2017 was the Dutch sense of interconnectedness in family and community. So I wanted to use that in the story arc - the balance of independence and interdependence as Pauw finds his own way, with the Moon and Tree as benevolent guiding characters.

I used the Adobe Creative Suite for layout and design of the book. This is my first book I've made this way, once the illustration bases were created I then unified the looks of the images in Photoshop. Then everything went into InDesign for the book layout, then the final print format was a pdf. Ilse at Drukkerij Service Boxtel was an excellent printing consultant, counseled on the preflight, and ensured printing with safe durable materials.

A Spanish version will follow!