Grant Simens
Love manifests itself in many forms. If you are ninety-nine or only ten, whether you live north or south of the equator, you will understand about love. This is a story about love in an international elementary school. It is not just a book about valentines and love in February. Cupid and Dove have to return to earth to help the students find true love. As all school-aged children know, life revolves around the start and end of a school year. This is even more pronounced in the life of an expat kid.
All the different manifestations of love are found hidden in the words of this book. Behind every character there is a special feeling and each feeling tells its own story. Read and experience how one feeling can complicate and yet make things perfect at the same time. See how the characters fall in and out of love through the course of a day. Whether it’s the unbelievable soaring, hundreds–of-feet-in-the-air love, or the lack of love for a solitary fish in a fishbowl of a Nigerian street shop. A picture says a thousand words but a feeling tells a thousand stories.
Grant Leif Simens was born in Australia, and then lived in Indonesia for seven years. He moved to Lagos, Nigeria for four years, but spends all of his summers in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He is a true third culture kid, with experiences from around the world. He wrote this book when he attended the American International School of Lagos.
He currently goes to the International School of Bangkok where he continues to write and play sports. He enjoys writing rhyming couplets. A couplet is a pair of lines of a verse that form a unit. He enjoyed Lois Burdett’s work with Shakespeare plays. He played Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and wanted to use that type of confusion to make a story about love in an elementary school.
Grant likes to practice the guitar, trombone, and the saxophone. He wants to continue to write stories that young kids will like to read. If you ever run across him in some airport, ask him what his current project is about.
This is a wondrous tale
Of this Valentine’s Day we fail.
I am Cupid and she is Dove,
And this is how we set up people for love.
This is a perfect time for glee,
So you should listen and then you will see.
The story begins at the home of a boy
Whom a special someone has filled him with joy.
As he prepares for Valentine’s Day,
His mother and father look through the window in dismay.
“What if he doesn’t get a valentine from Mandy?
Not a card, a word, or even candy.
I, Veronica, will not allow it.
I’ll do anything. I’ll even shout it.
If my son, Brad, is brokenhearted,
He will change his name and his life be restarted.
Unless I do something and do it fast,
My son’s great joy will not last.
I have the perfect idea of what to do for my plan.”
Then she went out of the room and off she ran.
