Query Letter for The Mythical Creature Conservatory
What happens when the only chance for the survival of mythological creatures is in the hands of the most anxious kid in 5th grade?
THE MYTHICAL CREATURE CONSERVATORY is a middle-grade fantasy, complete at 58K words, and was co-imagined with my ten-year-old son. It blends the warmth of belonging and kindness in Claribel A. Ortega’s Witchlings and J. Elle’s A Taste of Magic, with the globe-trotting mythology of NatGeo’s Greeking Out podcast.
Anxiety has been the driving force in 10-year-old Jack Allen’s life and kindness has only ever banished him to the sidelines. When he enters THE MYTHICAL CREATURE CONSERVATORY, however, Jack discovers that empathy is actually the only power capable of saving legendary creatures from vanishing forever.
The Conservatory is an enchanting place of joyfully humming trees and ancient phoenixes (that currently look more like Thanksgiving turkeys). There, endangered mythological creatures from every culture roam halls that reach the sherbet-hued sky. Children from all over the world are scouted for their hard-wired kindness, and only those who take initiative, even when they think nobody is looking, earn an invitation to become official Keepers at the dreamy Conservatory.
While they should be sleeping, Jack and his fellow Keepers are taught to keep stories alive to prevent the extinction of the fantastical denizens of the Mythical Creature Conservatory. When mercenary poachers breach the sanctuary’s protected walls and Jack stumbles upon a hidden clan of dangerous beasts segregated beneath the floors, he realizes that the only chance to survive is by uniting the creatures’ two worlds. Jack uses the hard-learned lesson that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being scared and doing it anyway, when he steps up to lead his new-found family (human and otherwise) to prevent the world’s oldest stories, and the creatures within them, from being lost for good.
Like Jack, both my son, Hudson, and I thrive with anxiety (among other hidden disabilities and neurodiversities) that is mitigated by self-talk, and I weave coping mechanisms that I employ as a volunteer crisis counselor throughout the story. Hudson contributed many story elements that he was yearning for in a book, with the goal of showing kids that their differences are strengths. In my role as head of DEI for a global ad-tech firm, my research reports have won industry awards, and I speak regularly on inclusive storytelling. I have proven success with attracting an audience, such as crowd-funding my patented invention and bringing hundreds of people to my small village’s inaugural Pride celebration.
THE MYTHICAL CREATURE CONSERVATORY also has the potential for a multi-book arc.
