Mravin and the Planet Forest

The little ant Mravin has lost the anthill that was his home until yesterday. While grieving in the woods and not knowing what to do, he meets the forest courier Miss Beetle and her life partner, Miss Butterfly. Their adventure begins with a blueberry to satisfy the hunger of the orphaned ant and continues in search of a new home in which he will be loved and happy. Along the way, they will meet different forest dwellers, each with its own oddities and differences. "Mravin and the Planet Forest" takes young and old to a world where it is most important to be together and to love each other, even though we are different.

"Mravin and the Planet Forest" is a children's book by Velikan Vasileva and illustrator Veselka Velinova, which we gladly supported because of all the important social topics that it touches on.

"Mravin's fairytale world will reveal to you in a magical and accessible way topics that are either difficult to talk about or often silent," commented psychologist Dr. Ivanina Ancheva. "And 'There's always a solution!' It is often to try and accept, understand the world of the other, who can "see" with their hands, shift the letters of the words, is homeless, their feathers are black and not white, or they have a different love in their life. Supposedly different from you, but still our smiles are all the same.”

Velikan Vasileva:

The idea for this children's book was born two years ago after a discussion in a self-organized group of same-sex families in Bulgaria. Rositsa Encheva contacted me and enthusiastically stated that I should write about their children. At first, I did not take her demands seriously, but she was insistent and kept asking me if I was writing. I wasn’t.

One evening Zornitsa Dimitrova, who later took care of the pre-printing of the book, asked me what I thought an ant would be called. Without thinking, I spitted out – Mravin!

So Mravin began to "live" with me and not give me peace until I wrote his story, in which he finds his two mothers and starts living with them.

I wanted this to be not just a children's tale, but a story inspired by real facts about animals in nature. This is how the Chervenochovkov family appeared. Then Mr. and Mrs. Kalinkovi, Uncle Kurt, and other animals, which could not all fit in just one book, so in our bold dreams Mravin will be a series in which he will find other friends.

"Mravin and the Planet Forest" was born quickly as a text, but encountered many difficulties on its way to visualize, so when Veselka Velinova embraced the idea with patience, sketch after sketch and color after color, it loaded the whole project with even more love.

I am happy and grateful that the project was also supported by the Single Step Foundation and the Parents Association because this enabled the book to reach more families and their children.

You can buy the book "Mravin and the Planet Forest" from our website here.