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 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!
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)