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My Caravan's a Rainbow: A Mystical Life in Colour

by David Chesterton

365 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; catalogue #05-2760; ISBN 1-4120-7862-8; US$24.78, C$28.50, EUR19.32, £12.81

A seven-year-old boy who sees auras and prefers drawing and painting to contact sports, meets a gypsy family and is encouraged to accept being different.

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About the Book

About the Author

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About the Book

Michael Davidson is a seven-year-old boy who has been born with the gift of synaesthesia, the ability to see auras and a tenuous, inconsistent potential to pick up thoughts telepathically. Unfortunately the time is the mid 1930's and the place is Leicester, England. In this dreary Midlands environment, these abilities are regarded by many as marks of the devil. They have also been known to result in people like Michael being committed to institutions for the insane.

Mike is also a gifted artist, but is rejected by the neighbourhood boys because he would rather paint than join them in rough, tough street games. What gets him in even deeper trouble with his aunts, neighbours, local street gangs and the local church is when he spends his entire summer with visiting Zincali gypsies, from the Basque Territories, people automatically labeled "dirty foreigners."

Despite the many individuals offended by Michael's differences and the campaigns of those who are intent on enforcing his return to the deadeningly homogeneous fold of normality, he discovers he has allies. First there is his mother who was also born with synaesthesia and can still, occasionally, see auras. Secondly, there is Tia Meg a gypsy, whom he initially fears as a witch. Then there is his grandfather who is a quiet sage who teaches his grandson unique and unconventional ways of dealing with some of his problems. Fourthly there is a schoolteacher who is regarded by most of her pupils as a dragon, but whom Mike finds is intent on promoting the differences in each of her students. Finally there is Mike's Phuri Dai, or gypsy grandmother, who reaches across the barriers of age, language and custom to persuade Michael to embrace his differences and accept them as an inalienable heritage.

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About the Author

The author has been writing since he was in his early teens, but for most of his life that was for fun. He was a graphic designer, then taught Graphic Design, Package Design, Colour and Creativity in a community college. He is a well-known watercolour artist and returned to serious writing when he retired 10 years ago. One of the 17 manuscripts on his computer was an autobiography for his grandchildren. He sent 20 pages every two or three weeks to his four siblings, but could never get more than two of them to agree on anything he had written. The common response was "you made it up." Since this is what most writing is all about, he changed the names of the main character (and his family) and produced "My Caravan's a Rainbow", calling it a pseudo-autobiography. A second book in the series is already written and a third almost complete.

David also has two series of mysteries, one involving a sleuth in London, England set in the 1920's and the other series featuring mysteries in which the principle character is a young sailor. Finally he has a fantasy series about a small country where colour is used to communicate to transmit messages and to heal.

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Excerpts

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Catalogue Information

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