Rowena Cala

Rowena lives in Snellville, Georgia with her husband and two young daughters. She is a fundraising professional at a large non-profit in Atlanta. This is Rowena's first children's book and she hopes to publish more picture books in the "Gia and Lincoln" series.

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From The Author: The Story Behind The Book

The story about Gia and Lincoln started as a creative exercise to engage my two daughters in the story telling process. Unlike many new children’s book authors, I was not making up a story to entertain my children at bedtime! It was actually bath time, and I was asking my daughters for story ideas, hoping they’d be the creative ones. 24 hours later, the idea to use allergies as a theme came from my older daughter, when I asked her, “What should the monkey and the lion talk about?” She pondered for a few seconds and then replied, “How about their allergies?” What I thought was a completely random suggestion, actually had merit, as I reflected on how my own seasonal and environmental allergies affected my life and family, and how many of my daughters’ classmates had food allergies.  It took a few days to write the first draft of Gia and Lincoln’s Aggravating Allergies and to deliberately craft a story that was not a clinical “how-to” book about allergy management. I wanted the book to highlight friendship, compromise and accepting imperfections. Writing the story was a fun and therapeutic process and I hope children and adults enjoy reading the book, whether they have allergies or not.