Two worlds, one light, five little wonders.

I write in German, from the Dominican Republic: two fantasy series — The Chronicles of the Shattered Sun and The Lost Light — and, for my grandchildren, bilingual stories about how the world works.

The Series

Two series, two registers — each with a site of its own.

Children's book · Pip & Friends, Book 1 · Bilingual EN / ES

Little Wonders / Pequeñas maravillas

Five Bilingual Stories About How Things Work
Cinco cuentos bilingües sobre cómo funcionan las cosas

Why does it rain? What makes a friendship work? Some questions are too big for a quick answer. In these five gentle stories children don't get told how the world works — they watch it happen.

A small hedgehog searches the night forest for a star that has fallen from the sky. A raindrop leaves its cloud in fear and travels all the way to the sea and back again. Every story follows one little character through a real adventure, and along the way something about the world quietly explains itself. I wrote them for my grandchildren.

1. Pip and the Lost Star A story about friendship, and why two can do what one cannot.
2. The Little Raindrop The water cycle, and how courage is only ever the next small step.
3. Lilli, the Little Seed How a tiny seed grows into a plant, and why even darkness has a purpose.
4. Bella, the Little Bee How bees help flowers become fruit, and why even the smallest visitor can make a big difference.
5. Ben, the Little Caterpillar The wonder of metamorphosis, and how a little caterpillar becomes something he never imagined he could be.

About me

Pen name · writes in German · lives in the Dominican Republic

A. B. Calder is the pen name of an author who has been working on a single story for more than fifteen years.

He lives with his family in the Dominican Republic — far from the German-speaking world, but close to the conviction that language and home need not be the same thing. By day he works as a self-employed IT contractor, industrial electronics technician and freelance programmer — professions concerned with systems, with connections, with the question of why something works and what happens when it stops.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that his first series is about a machine that was meant to hold the world together — and no longer does. A question became characters, the characters became chapters, and the chapters became a saga in ten volumes.

A. B. Calder writes in German. Little Wonders / Pequeñas maravillas is the exception: written for my grandchildren, for children growing up between two languages, and for the better of all questions — not “who rules?” but “how does that work?”.

“Some stories you begin. This one began me.”