Elise Primavera Pens New Fantasy Novel MARIGOLD STAR

Children's book author-illustrator Elise Primavera begins her newest middle grade fantasy adventure Marigold Star by asking the question: What is your magic power? It's a question that her main character, Marigold Star, is sent on a quest to discover. It is also one that the author believes is vital in order to cultivate what makes us uniquely ourselves and one that she hopes the story will leave her readers to ponder.

Marigold has always had a star that glows above her head and in Brambycrumbly, that means she's marked for greatness. The problem is there is nothing that Marigold is great at-except making friends. She can't fly, and she hasn't even learned how to do the Invisibility Spell. When her star starts to blink, Marigold goes straight to Granny Cabbage, who tells her she needs to find her magic power. While following Granny's advice, Marigold loses her magic wand and lands in the bedroom of a most unpopular human girl who doesn't like anybody. The girl also has Marigold's wand. Worse yet, Marigold is still visible! Or is she?

Marigold soon realizes she's only visible to this girl-and soon after, two other friendless kids who she meets in the human world. What Marigold doesn't know is that maybe her star really has marked her for greatness and that maybe she's finally found her magic power as a great imaginary and life-changing friend.

Marigold Star is a character who always sees the best in others but it's only through her adventure that she learns to see the best in herself as well. "Marigold Star is a reminder to all of us that it is possible to embrace our differences rather than use them as a reason to not be friends," concludes Primavera.

Elise Primavera has been writing and illustrating books for children for over twenty-five years. Her illustrations for RAISING DRAGONS by Jerdine Nolen (Harcourt, 1998) received a 1999 Christopher Award, the 1999 Irma S. and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature from the Bank Street College of Education, and an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award. In 1999, she created the national best-selling series AUNTIE CLAUS.

She was asked to illustrate the Christmas Brochure for the White House in 2004 and, in 2006, wrote and illustrated her first middle grade novel, the popular SECRET ORDER OF THE GUMM STREET GIRLS. She has gone on to write the middle grade series MS. RAPSCOTT'S GIRLS and LIBBY OF HIGH HOPES.

Currently AUNTIE CLAUS is being developed as a feature film for Netflix with Kenny Ortega (High School Musical, Disney's The Descendants) as producer/director. The Nashville Children's Theater will host AUNTIE CLAUSE the musical from Nov 14 - Dec 29, 2019.

Her latest middle grade novel from HarperCollins, MARIGOLD STAR - which she both wrote and illustrated - is now available everywhere books are sold and on Amazon.

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