2022 Award for Best Book for Young Adults — ADVENTURES OF MAYANA: FALLING OFF THE EDGE OF THE EARTH


by David Perry
Belize, 1985-87

 

 

The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth is the story of a 17-year Belizean girl named Mayana who finds herself on an adventure in a fantasyland of magic, monsters, and intrigue. She crosses over from her homeland of Belize to an alternate reality where the laws of nature and science are very different from what she learned. While she attempts to find her way back to Belize, she befriends a young man named Shifu who mysteriously appears, and speaks only in parables. He helps Mayana use her new-found magic powers to fight monsters and witches and to attempt to find her way home. Shifu also helps her to discover the meaning of life, how to understand why people are the way they are, and most of all how to understand herself.

All during her journey, she relies on the recollections of conversations that she had over the years with her skeptical father who taught her that magic, miracles, gods and supernaturalism are all just hocus pocus. Mayana has to reconcile the teachings of her father with what she experiences in this new land where everything she learned is wrong.

David Perry

David Perry has worked in education for more than 30 years serving as a classroom teacher from kindergarten through adults, a Title 1 director and a school principal. As a teacher, David learned how to present material to students in a way that is comprehensible, engaging and meaningful. Learning how to put himself inside the heads of others allowed him to do this and he applied this strategy to his new book hoping that it would create a higher level of intrigue and interest in the story.

This is David’s first book and he was able to complete it when the Covid pandemic freed up some time. He had been wanting to write a book for a long time and he hopes to write a second one, perhaps Part 2 of this work.

In addition to writing, David plays the piano, cross country skis and figure skates. He and his wife love to travel and they have been all over the country, usually camping along the way.

David has a wife, a son and a four-year-old granddaughter whom he and his wife adopted as their daughter. His wife, Anaceli is from Belize, and David lived in Belize as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two and a half years. David and Anaceli go to Belize every year or two to visit family.

The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth
David Perry (Belize, 1985-87)
Independently published, 2021
Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction
Target Age: High School/Young Adult
268 pages
$9.99 (Kindle)

 

6 Comments

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  • Congratulations !on winning this outstanding award on ur 1st..,published book!!!Bravo!!!’The GorrillazGirls will bei reading it soon!! Love and Joy as you begin another wonderful year in EDUCATION!!!!Soooo many hearts and minds to touch!!👍❤️⭐️✝️

    • Dave, it’s Craig!! You finished your book and got it published and now you have received an Award for it? That is so Next Level!! I am Blown Away for sure!!! Congratulations!!! WOW!!

  • Can hardly wait for the second part to become available- anxiously waiting for new and exciting adventures to fire the imagination!

  • You are dancing to the music of your dear life now
    As you partake it, enjoy it, wonder at its rising
    into the clouds out there over the sharp rocks
    dancing to the music of the time that remains
    the story that goes on from there for you is a
    finding and forging an understanding swiveting
    –not the routines a nation’s decline promises—
    coming as you partake it enjoy it watching it rise
    into clouds above distant sharp rocks hopes surmount
    you are dancing to the music of your dear life now
    © Copyright Edward Mycue

    MORE pieces by EDWARD MYCUE
    ________________________________________
    Song
    from: Night Boats, 1999
    At night your strange heart
    is music learned in love where moonmilk
    is silence. San Francisco,
    these are your rites. At your feet
    are your children, a deep-pile
    garnet rug, broken bisque porcelain
    writing our histories on your
    lymph that like your promise once
    calf-white is now memory-tongued,
    eggshell-thin, raving for healing
    this desperate geography. Your
    skies plum-colored, your boats
    oarless bob in the marmalade waves.
    Get washed you blind, handsome
    city. Your harbor has a stone in
    its mouth. A wingless buzzing
    rises in grey fusion. This weather
    mounts a holocaust song, red, full
    like the hope-ruby with its rue and rage.
    Now we are old linoleum, littered, torn and
    we fight the sunset
    climbing our blue humming.
    ________________________________________
    From the ‘BUMPS’ series of poems

    100. A PIECE OF ICE
    IS ABOUT MELTING
    BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
    ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
    WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
    MEMORY OF HURRY.

    55. BUMPS
    BOYS ADMIRED OTHER BOYS’
    MUSCLES. GIRLS OTHER GIRLS’
    BREASTS. BOTH WANTED THE
    BUMPS. WANTED TO SWELL-UP,
    GROW-UP, TO BE SOMEBODY
    BIGGER, beautiful, BUMPY.
    BUMPS MEANT POWER, ROCK ‘N
    SEX, WHITE TEETH, wheels,
    DRINKING BOOZE FROM PAPER BAGS,
    LIFTED ARMS AND pecs ALL BUMPY.

    114. SCAR HUNT
    SINCE THEY SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE ALL THE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD
    ONEANOTHER AS A FAMILY WHO WANDERED LOOKING FOR A LAND TO LIKE. WHEN THEY
    FOUND IT THEY BEGAN TO CHANGE IT INTO A GREAT CITY WITH DECORATED WALLS,
    COURTYARDS AND A TOWER TO MAKE THEM FAMOUS EVEN TO TODAY A PROUD PEOPLE WHO
    OVERSTROVE BECOMING COUPLED WITH A CURSE OF VOICES LIKE A TEEN GHETTO OF
    MUSICDANCINGHUMMING PRESS-ME-TO-YOU TUNE HELPHELPHELPHELP AND LETMEALONE LET
    ME ALONE EVERYTHING TODAY ADJUSTMENT ENACTMENT OLDCARSNOISE. NOW. SO TIME’S
    ROUGH FINGERS PRINTED THEM OUT LIKE A STATISTIC OF DEFECTS WHEN THE WHOLE
    SYSTEM WENT PIANO.

    100. A PIECE OF ICE
    IS ABOUT MELTING
    BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
    ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
    WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
    MEMORY OF HURRY.

    43. A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE
    A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE,
    SHE TUGGED ON HIS COAT.
    SHE CHASED.
    HE SAID HE DIDN’T TOUCH HER, TRIED
    TO DODGE,
    THEN THE HORSE,
    A BIG BEAUTIFUL HORSE
    IN THE DREAM CAME AGAINST HIM
    CROUCHING HIS HANDSOMENESS
    AGAINST HIS CHEST.
    HE KEPT TRYING, FAILING
    TO UNLATCH
    THE DOOR AT HIS BACK.
    YES, HE SAID, IT WAS
    A DREAM, BUT THE HORSE,
    SO BIG AND HANDSOME,
    FRIGHTENED ME.
    I WAS AFRAID
    HE WOULD CRUSH ME INTO HIM.
    SO, HE SAID, SIR, PLEASE
    DON’T OPEN THE DOOR.

    75. MEMORIES:—– steam
    IS WHAT YOU WANT MEMORIES TO BE
    INSTEAD OF BEING SUCH A MIXED BAG
    OF HIPS AND MAGNETS AND DEAD CATS.
    ________________________________________© Copyright Edward Mycue

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