Anusha of Prospect Corner is now available! Meet my co-authors, Maram and Samira, in the video (above).
To learn more about Anusha of Prospect Corner (and see reviews), find it on:
- Amazon (with a sample) (click here); and
- Goodreads (click here)
Our middle grade novel is a modern, multicultural homage to one of my favorite novels from childhood, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Anusha’s family does not fully mirror our family’s ethnic or religious identities — it’s fiction, after all — but Anusha’s family and our family are both Sri Lankan-American (I’m half Sri Lankan).
In the video, Samira refers to “Anusha’s Origin,” which is a note at the beginning of the novel about how this project developed. Here it is:
We are excited to share Anusha with you!
The Misfortune Of Knowing 
Oh, my goodness, you and your girls look so charming, I almost can’t handle it! I want to make sure I purchase the book in a way that sends most of the money to you and not a person reselling the novel. Is the Kindle copy okay?
Awww, thank you! You are so kind (and yes, the Kindle copy works). My daughters and I had such a great time writing Anusha of Prospect Corner. In some ways, Anusha feels like a member of our family.
What a great project! We really need more diversity and representation in our media and literature.
Thank you! I hope other people will identify with Anusha as much as my daughters do.
Fantastic! I will have to buy it! I teach ESL and I am always looking for more stories about multicultural characters for my students to connect to.
Thank you! I hope other children will identify with Anusha the way my daughters do.
The novel sounds wonderful. I’m impressed how you and the girls were able take something of interest and create a whole new book. What an awesome family project!
Thank you! It was a fun project. I loved updating one of my favorite novels with my girls.
This is the greatest. Went directly onto my Goodreads list! ❤
Thank you, Andi! We had so much fun writing it.
Congratulations! This sounds like such a fun project to do. I’ve always loved Anne of Green Gables as a child and to see a multicultural version/spin-off of the classic novel is such a wonderful! 🙂
Thank you! It was a great experience. I learned so much about my girls while writing this story with them. 🙂
This. Is. Amazing! You have two wonderful, bright, and inspiring little girls! I can’t wait to read this one-I’m heading over to Amazon to buy it right now 🙂
Thank you, Maggie! We hope you enjoy this story. It was so much fun to write, and I learned so much about my girls during the process. They are just starting to explore their identities as redheaded members of a mixed, Sri Lankan-American family. I’m still writing with my girls on a weekly basis (I have to finish a chapter today or I’ll be in “trouble”!), and my twins are also writing stories on their own. Samira tends to write realistic fiction, while Maram writes fantasy.
I hope to read their individual work one day, too 🙂
They’ll be delighted when I tell them you said that! They are shy about sharing their work, but working with them on Anusha has given them some confidence.
This sounds so cool! Incredibly diverse, and I love a twist on a classic 🙂
Thank you! We are so excited about it. It was such a fun project to do with my kids. I learned so much about them during the process.
I’m going to be reading this book for sure! I loved Anne of Green Gables as a child and since I’m a quarter Sinhalese Malaysian, I feel like I may be able to identify with Anusha – though I am much older! 😀
Thank you! We would love to know what you think of our story. We hope it is as much fun to read as it was to write. I loved trying my hand at writing middle grade fiction and receiving input on just about every aspect of it from a pair of middle grade readers. I learned so much about my twins through this project. They are a quarter Sri Lankan and just starting to explore their identity. Many of the experiences Anusha has stem from experiences my girls have had (and some are experiences I have had as a person of mixed ancestry).
Your girls are adorable! I hope you all keep writing! And I love the photo at the end of the post with all of you together!
Thank you! We love writing together. I learned so much about my girls while working on this project. It was a bonding experience. Speaking of bonding experiences… my girls are looking through plant catalogues right now for the butterfly garden. They squeal whenever they come across a flower they like. It’s so cute.
They are going to turn into great little gardeners! 🙂
Wow, what a wonderful achievement! I hope your daughters keep creating stories as they get older. I’m sure they will! Being published authors so young must provide a great confidence boost. ;D I love this project, Amal. Wish you and your girls the best.
Thanks, Naz! We had a great time writing it together. I learned a lot about my girls through this project. They are just starting to explore their heritage, and some of the issues Anusha confronts are ones that they face too. We continue to write together on a weekly basis, and my twins also write stories on their own. Maram tends to write fantasy, and Samira tends to write realistic or historical fiction. 🙂
The video is so cute! Your kids look proud. Congrats!
Thank you! Maram and Samira are really excited about it. 🙂
YES! Congratulations to you and the girls! I’ve bought and downloaded the kindle book and can’t wait to read it!
Thank you so much, Jaclyn! We hope you like it! It was such a great experience to write it with my girls. I learned so much about how they see their identity, which they’ve just started to explore. It was fascinating. It was also interesting to try my hand at Middle Grade fiction. I’m glad I had two MG readers to help me out!
It sounds wonderful! 😀
Thank you! We had a great time writing it.
This is such a wonderful project! Love that you did this with your kids and that there’s now this book for other girls who want to see themselves and their experiences reflected in the books they read. Congrats to you all!😊
Thank you! This book was important for my children, who are exploring their heritage now. It was so much fun to write.
Anne has till now remained the most relatable female character to me, and this is wonderful as you add that diversity of being Lankan to it! I’m so excited to read it and even more excited that your girls had a big part in creating it! Thank you so much for this project, it adds one more diverse book for young readers, i cannot wait to recommend it to my own cousins 🙂
Thank you! It was an important project for me to do with my girls, especially because they’re exploring their heritage now. I hope we didn’t misrepresent Anusha in how we described her, though. She’s like my kids, who are a quarter Sri Lankan and grappling with what that means for their identity. We see ourselves as Sri Lankan-American, and that’s how others see me (I’m half), but I don’t know if that’s how others see my children. This book was a way of exploring these types of themes.
This sounds like a lovely idea. I always enjoy retellings of classic stories, especially if they add diversity.
Thank you! Writing this story with my kids was a fun bonding experience. I learned so much about my girls, and I think they learned about me too. The topics we were writing about encouraged discussions about experiences we’ve actually had in our lives.
What a beautiful idea and a sweet introduction, congratulations to you all on your collaboration!
Thank you! I loved working on this project with my girls. It was a bonding experience that produced a novel they can see themselves in.
Ooooohhhh! So very cool!
Thank you! I loved every second of writing this story with my girls.
WOAH!! I LOVE!! I’m delighted to see such a diverse and creative novel! I’ll definitely be sharing this and adding it to my TBR 💛
Thank you! It was such a fun story to write with my kids. I love that they see themselves in Anusha (and Katie, because my twins wanted to include a “twin” of some sort, and twins are a theme in the original story). If you decide to read it, we hope you like it!