Arnée Flores: Hello. My name is Arnée Flores and I am the author of The Firebird Song. Many years ago, I stood in what had once been the living room of my beloved family home. The windows had been blown out and there was no roof. The walls were dripping and black, and everything was charred. In a matter of hours, a fire had burned away everything but our memories. That moment would become the foundation for a kingdom afraid of fire, where monsters grow from sparks and destroy everything. It would force me to ask the question, where can we find hope when all that is tangible has been destroyed? I began drafting The Firebird Song on an especially cold and rainy day in October. Especially rainy is saying something, as I live in Seattle, where autumn is a constant gray drizzle. But on this day it was so treacherous that the windows shook, and the lights flickered, and I sat on the floor of a laundry closet surrounded by damp and mildew and imagined a stormy kingdom without warmth, overtaken by mold and darkness, where nature itself is dangerous and unfriendly. My hope for kids is that they will recognize a bit of their current world in this fantasy world and that they will be able to bring the courage and hope and strength of my characters and keep that in their hearts, use it to be able to face whatever comes at them in the current world. I'd like to read a short passage from The Firebird Song and to give you a look into Lyrica, a place where storms rage, books are banned, and little girls are kidnapped from their beds.

"What brings you to my bookshop, barge boy? As you can see, I'm running rather low on inventory these days."

Prewitt ran a hand through his hair. "A long time ago you came and took a book from our house. It was gold with..." "With red lettering embossed on the front. Yes, I remember," snaps the bookkeeper. "I remember all the books and all the names of anyone who has ever borrowed them. I remember the day your father asked for that book like it was this morning." He smoothed his scalp as if preening invisible hair. "He wanted you to know how things used to be. I think he viewed it as his own little rebellion." Pruitt played with the buttons on his jacket. That didn't sound like his father to him.

"Do you still have it?" The bookkeeper tilted his head. "My days of book smuggling are over, barge boy. Just as I remember all the books, I remember the deck. I remember the sounds they made when the Ash Golems feasted on their flesh. Skin doesn't burn like paper, you know, it melts and drips like..." Pruitt took a step backwards, covering his ears, not wanting to hear. Granny Arila's face flashed in his mind. He knocked into a wooden chair beside a small desk, and a tiny silver pot toppled over, oozing thick black ink across water wrinkled parchment. Pruitt rushed to clean it, but the bookkeeper waved a gnarled hand. "Leave it." Pruitt wiped his fingers on his pants. Above the desk, portraits of bookkeepers past stared done at him with the same sharp eyes that watched him now. "I won't get caught," he promised. "I'll keep it secret. I'll be careful." "That's what they all said. And where are they now?" "You don't understand. I have to have it. I need it." The bookkeeper's eyes glowed in the dark. "I understand perfectly."