I am a grandfather and I used to read bedtime stories to my grandson until I ran out of books on my shelves, so I started to make up stories, and "Pauline And Her Petits Yiyis" is the one he liked most ...
Pauline is an eight year old French girl of mixed nationality, who lives with her widowed father on the top floor of an old building in Montmartre, Paris, France.
One night, she discovers that her toes (nicknamed "petits yiyis" by her father) have disappeared, but there is no sign of violence and they have not been chopped off, they simply flew away. Without knowing how, she can visualise them and "follow" them in her mind, to discover that they meet with other petits yiyis.
Her first mission, with the assistance of her five Rainlight friends, four girls and one boy, all from different parts of the world, is to find the code that leads them to hidden shelters of Small Creatures in distress in Paris and bring them to Turtle Island, to protect them from the Angries, the Clouds and the Shadows, and to restore Hope to Humanity.
She has visions or dreams and one day she "sees" that at the beginning of Humanity, fruit from the olive trees which fell onto the ground, turned into "petits yiyis" which in turn gave birth to "Rainlights", pure creatures of a lost paradise, on the earth in the sea and in the sky.
Some "Rainlights" wanted to get overall power on that forgotten world and started to pollute it and became the « Angries », who devised creatures like "Clouds" of stinking shards of glass, containing hateful faces, and Shadows, which are the auxiliaries of the Clouds. These two kinds of creatures are produced by the frustrated dreams, jealousy, anger and greed, of some humans. Pauline can see their thoughts coming out of their heads like on a screen, before they rise into the sky and form the Clouds.
Pauline is not on her own, she soon teams up with her friends from school: Nafissatou from Cameroun, Fatima from Algeria, Sarah from Israel, Zhi Ruo from China and Aurelio from Portugal, and she teaches them to use their own "petitis yiyis" as drones with a kind of "built-in camera and bluetooth" system.
She also receives visits from her mother, who died in a car accident. Her mother appears to her in a green whirl pool, and encourages her to fulfil her potential.
Pauline is guided along her path of self-discovery by her mother, father, and cousins from Zakynthos, a Greek island.
She understands that she needs to bring as many "abandoned petits yiyis" ("Refugees") back to the Island of Zakynthos, and in particular to a group of two little rocks, off the shore of Agios Sostis (Holy Righteousness), which form a gigantic turtle, appropriately named Turtle Island.
The general message of the book is to spread compassion beyond races and creeds, and respect the Past, so as to use the Present astutely and to protect the Future, a message that only children, pure at heart and poets can perpetuate.
This first episode leads to many future adventures: in other countries and with many Ancient Civilisations and Creeds...
