QUERY
For eleven-year-old Anastasiya, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Her drawings are the bridge to another world where barriers between language, friendship, and love don’t exist.
When Ana and her family move from their quiet Bulgarian village to the bustling city of Atlanta, she is nervous and excited—America is the land of dreams! But as school starts and her parents begin new work, Ana’s adventure looks more like a nightmare. Bullied for her language barrier, Ana turns to her sketch pad.
While stuck in an after-school program with Jack, the class bully, Ana draws all her frustrations. Her deepest wishes transport her into a magical kingdom inspired by Ana’s favorite stories from home. Except Jack has come along, too. Unfortunately for them, Baba Yaga has cursed Balgari: The Queen is missing and the natural world has gone haywire. They must work together to save the kingdom from the curse or risk losing their reward, the wishful stone, capable of taking them where they most want to go. For Ana, back to her homeland. For Jack, a time when his father was home. But with only one stone and one wish, Ana must choose between reuniting with her loved ones or making the ultimate sacrifice. In the end, Ana and Jack must learn a valuable lesson: Change is not easy, but it can be magical.
Alice in Wonderland meets Shaun Tan’s Arrival, ANA OF THE BALGARI is a 200 page #ownvoices immigration middle grade graphic novel. Vania Stoyanova created the script with initial art by Anna Tsocheva. Both were born in Bulgaria with strong ties to the culture, language and magic of the land, making them the perfect team to bring Ana’s story of immigration and adventure to life. The full script and samples of art, including seven complete pages, are available upon request.
Vania Stoyanova is a Bulgarian immigrant, photographer, and social media content creator for NY TIMES bestselling authors and publishers. She lives in Atlanta and is the founder and host of YATL LIVE, an Atlanta-based YA book talk show, which has made appearances at Atlanta Comic Con, DragonCon, Decatur Book Festival and Book Con. Currently she serves on the board of directors for Atlanta’s Broadleaf Writers Association.
Anna Tsocheva lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. She’s an illustrator and storyteller with a passion for comics and animation. She works in both traditional and digital mediums and loves experimenting with new styles and ideas. Anna believes stories bring people closer together, so she wants to help build a strong comics community in her country.
Thank you for your consideration.
OVERVIEW:
Eleven-year-old Ana copes with her family’s big move to America through her art. When she draws herself into a magical, yet familiar, world based on her most treasured memories and stories from home in Bulgaria, she learns that love has no barriers and friendship no borders.
Eleven-year- old Ana’s entire world revolves around her home of Bulgaria. She loves everything about it: the adventures she has with her friends, the stories she makes up with her grandmother, and the magical places she has visited. But a new opportunity for her parents means a big move for her family. Ana packs up her old life and flies to America, leaving everything behind to start a new life in Atlanta, Georgia. Once there, all she has left of her old life is her sketchbook and a tiny handmade doll her grandmother gave her.
Everything in American is different and Ana does not like it. She is most definitely not interested in starting at a new school, making friends, and learning a whole new language. Not to mention that she is bullied and picked on for being different. So, Ana channels her feelings and frustrations into the pages of her sketchbook, transporting herself literally into Balgari, the magical land she created, inspired by her memories of Bulgaria. She has imagined the kingdom countless times and, suddenly, she can live there, and it is the perfect escape.
Except there are three little problems: the school bully was transported to Balgari with Ana, her doll has come to life, and there is a curse plaguing the kingdom.
Now with the infamous witch Baba Yaga’s wretched curse looming over them, Jack, Ana, and her doll, Elena, must work together to save the princess of Balgari. If they do, they will get a magical wishing stone that will grant them whatever they want. For Ana, that means a ticket back to her hometown in Bulgaria, and returning to her old friends and her beloved grandmother. For Jack, it means more time with his family, not to mention the new baby.
Unfortunately for them, there is only one wishing stone.
Now Jack and Ana must work together with the help of a few magical creatures from Bulgarian myths to save the kingdom of Balgari. Over the course of their adventures, they will learn to face their fears, make trusted new friends, and accept that change is part of life, whether it happens in a mythical land, or at home in Atlanta.
Format & Delivery:
Ana of the Balgari is a full-color graphic novel for the middle grade market. The writer has a completed script available.
Estimated Pages: 206
Ideal final trim size: 9x6
Publisher will need to hire a letterer for this project.
Comp Titles:
Ana of the Balgari features immigration themes like Shaun Tan’s Arrival, beautiful storybook imagery like The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen, themes of acceptance and the complicated feelings of being a non-English speaker like One Good Thing About America by Ruth Freeman, and the fantastical imagery of Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez.
About the Author:
Vania Stoyanova is a Bulgarian immigrant, photographer, and social media content creator for NEW YORK TIMES bestselling authors and publishers. She lives in Atlanta and is the founder and host of YATL LIVE, a zany, Atlanta-based YA book talk show, which has made appearances at Atlanta Comic Con, DragonCon, Decatur Book Festival, and Book Con. Currently, she serves on the board of directors for Atlanta’s Broadleaf Writers Association. She is also known as the Queen of YA Truth or Dare.
YATLlive.com
@yatllive
yatllive.com
About the Artist:
Anna Tsocheva lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is an illustrator and storyteller with a passion for comics and animation. She works in both traditional and digital mediums and loves experimenting with new styles and ideas. During the day, she works at the Bulgarian animation studio Zmey. During her free time, she teaches comics writing and mentors young illustrators. Anna believes stories bring people closer together and she hopes to help build a strong comics community in her country.
@rikaescribbles
SYNOPSIS:
For eleven-year-old Anastasiya Boteva (Ana), a picture is worth more than a thousand words. For her, art is an escape into another world where barriers between language, friendship, and love do not exist.
Leaving her friends, beloved grandma, and the Bulgarian village where she grew up behind is not what Ana wants. With her sketchbook and the handmade doll her grandmother gave her, Ana makes the move across the ocean to the United States. Her family’s arrival could not be in sharper contrast to what Ana is used to. She trades babbling brooks for massive highways and busy roads, towering trees for skyscrapers, and her charming village is replaced with chaotic city life. School is hard, but making friends is even harder because Ana does not speak English and she struggles to connect due to the language barrier. At home, she feels just as lost, as Mom and Dad are busy with work and getting the family settled in their new life. Feeling like her whole world is unravelling, Ana retreats into the only place that feels familiar: her sketchbook.
When Jack, the class bully, stands up for Ana when she gets picked on, she is surprised but reluctantly invites him to draw with her. But her drawing comes to life and Ana’s magic pulls both of them out of the school yard and into a new world altogether. Welcome to Balgari, Ana’s imaginary world filled with all the things she loves and misses from back home in Bulgaria. She welcomes this new adventure, but she does not expect to share it with Jack and Elena, her doll that has come to life. To add to the surprises, Ana realizes that she can understand Jack and he can understand her, even though they don’t speak the same language. Balgari is meant to be her refuge, but now annoying, inquisitive Jack is tagging along. He is not the kind of friend she wanted, but he is the only friend she has got.
Ana and Jack get swept up into the kingdom of Balgari where they are invited to join the festivities for the soon to be crowned Rose Queen. The capital city is ready for a party but things are amiss: the roses are dying, the people are agitated, the weather has gone awry, and there are rumors about a curse. The cheeriness of the festival is interrupted when the princess doesn’t show up and the townspeople grow even more concerned. Soon they learn that the princess is actually missing. The reward for the princess’s safe return is a wishing stone, a magical stone that can grant any wish. Ana admits that she would wish to go home to the country she misses, and Jack doesn’t share what he would wish for, though he is eager to win the stone for himself.
As they search for answers, the curse grows more powerful. Nature is out of balance, a storm is brewing, and everyone is blaming Baba Yaga, which makes sense to Ana because Baba Yaga is a mean witch from storybooks. Jack is great at figuring things out, Elena is good at uncovering secrets, and Ana is good at art. And now her art has turned magical and she uses it to bring things to life to help them and transport them places. From the Eye, one of the Seven Lakes, that takes them to the truth, to the Enchanted Forest where they discover more about the curse, to the dragon’s hidden cave that turns out to be as a sanctuary away from the bullies outside, to the White Fortress where the sky and land meet to return those that are loved and missed, to the Witch’s Garden, the home of the scary Baba Yaga, Ana and Jack search for the princess. Along the way, they make friends with Neza, a legendary creature called a samodiva, who teaches them to be brave, and Vika, a shapeshifting dragon, who teaches them to be themselves and never to make assumptions about others.
As the group chases the clues, the curse also chases them as it intensifies around them, threatening everything Ana loves. It burns her sketchbook and leaves Ana questioning her magic, and if she is capable of doing magic without it. In the middle of the night, the curse snatches away her friend Neza and tries to take Elena, too. It is not until they’re in front of Baba Yaga that they learn why the curse has been following them with such vengeance. Ana confronts Baba Yaga, assuming that the witch is responsible for the curse and the missing princess, only to learn that her assumption is wrong. Just as Baba Yaga is not the old scary witch from the stories, Elena is not just a doll.
Elena confesses she is the missing princess. Afraid of her new role as queen, she fled the kingdom before the coronations by using one of the wishful stones. The princess wished to be out of Balgari, but the curse brought her back to the kingdom in the form of Elena. Ana, Jack and Vika share their own stories of feeling afraid—staring at a new school, reading in front of the class, and changing into a dragon for the first time. Ana realizes that she was no different than Elena, because Ana feared change, too. She was too afraid and uncomfortable to make friends at her new school and make the best of her new home. So the curse not only grew in the princess’s absence, but it followed Elena, hoping she would restore balance to the kingdom by embracing her new role as queen.
With her new friends by her side, the princess is finally ready to become queen and the group returns to the Enchanted Forest for the coronation. Ana and Jack are given the wishful stone, but neither are ready or willing to use it just yet. At home, Ana embraces her new life. She chooses to spend time with her little brother, video chats with family in Bulgaria, and enjoys the moments she has with her parents when they are home. At school, Ana opens up and makes friends with the help of Jack, and although Ana still doesn’t know the language, she is taking ESL and learning more every day. She can also count on Jack to help her along. After all, he picked up a few Bulgarian words in Balgari! Ana doesn’t feel as isolated anymore and gladly shares little bits of her culture with her classmates.
