A Stargazer

Aylin has a high fever when she meets Vesper, a star boy who miraculously visits her from space. Others think her illness has made her imagine everything, but Aylin believes she truly received healing stardust from her visitor. After this strange and wonderful experience, she becomes fascinated by space and dreams of learning more. She reads everything she can, watches the constellations, and eventually saves up for a telescope.

But when Aylin's class visits the city observatory, things don't go the way she expects. Her most important questions are met with impatience-and laughter. Just when she's about to give up, an unexpected friend appears: the observatory's elderly janitor, who seems to understand stardust and the beauty of the universe better than anyone.

A luminous picture book about curiosity, resilience, and keeping your sense of wonder-even when others don't understand.

Tuula Pere (b. 1958) holds a Ph.D. in Law and is an award-winning children's author from Helsinki, Finland. Her doctoral dissertation, published in 2015, examines the limits of freedom of speech in the Finnish mass media amidst the social and cultural shifts of the 1960s and 1970s. Prior to her doctoral research, Tuula Pere had a career spanning over two decades as a lawyer and held various expert and executive positions in large industrial companies.Since 2010, Tuula Pere has published over seventy children's books, many of which have been translated into multiple languages. She has also authored poetry and aphorisms for children, as well as short stories and non-fiction for adults. Tuula Pere is an avid music and sports enthusiast and a keen baker. She is married and the mother of three.