Book Description

Meet Rasheed, Jonathan, and Josephine and their magical animal helpers: Maximilian the fire fox, Dan the karkadan, Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent (but you can call her Quetzy). They're three unique kids who love mysteries (actually they hate mysteries, but they love solving them). Join them in their adventures where they take on evil doers and monsters while shattering the misconceptions and expectations of people who make the mistake of underestimating them.In this first adventure they cross the country and ocean in order to uncover who is behind the sweatshops exploiting the forced labor of magical creatures.Note from the Author: Last year my friend Macy, who uses a wheelchair and has an animal companion named Destry, approached me with a problem: there weren't enough kids' books featuring kids with disabilities--especially stories where they could see themselves as heroes. After discussion and in the spirit of BEING the change we want to see in the world, we decided: hey, let's write them ourselves. After all, I'm (Ted) a writer and I know something about stories. So with Macy as my patient guide, teacher, and consultant we dreamed up MYSTERY FORCE, a ten book series featuring three friends, Rasheed, Jonathan, and Jojo who go about solving mysteries, going on adventures, and generally being AWESOME, while living with (and sometimes enhanced) by their disabilities.Making these kids joyful agents of their own destinies was one of the guiding principles of the stories, as well as promoting understanding, tolerance, and resilience. The kids have their own animal companions, in the form of magical creatures--ones you've probably never heard of like karkadans, alicorns, and jackalopes. It's taken for granted in Rasheed, Jonathan, and Jojo's world that well-known fanciful creatures like dragons, unicorns, and griffins are not fantasies--the kids' geometry teacher is a Pegasus! But because of their lesser-known status, the kids' animal companions face discrimination and exclusion. That is where the kids of Mystery Force share their own lessons of resiliency coaching and helping their friends navigate intolerance, ignorance, and stigma.Aaaand they make time to solve some mysteries and save the world too!These are booked aimed at primary school age/early readers. The ten stories are COMPLETE. The first book is available now! But as a writer and not an artist I've reached out to the incomparable Suzi Spooner (some of her work here: https://www.suzispooner.com/) to illustrate the books. As you may guess the visuals for these books will be SO KEY to inclusive representation. So Suzi's work is the REAL magic here.To that end, even with a generous discount on Suzi's part because she believes in this project, great artwork takes work (and come one, artists need to EAT!) So we're raising money to pay for the rest of the series here on GoFundMe Mystery Force page: gf.me/u/ywig5r