Aloya y el Mar

Let's go for the new objective! Let's go for 6000 Euros!

We have achieved the first objective in 24 hours!
Lets go to achieve the second objective in order to print a second batch of Aloya y el Mar and to raise more money to ASLEUVAL.

We want to resume Aloya y el Mar project with these words that María wrote. These words reflect María’s philosophy of life, which she applied everyday of her life and she depicts in this book:

"Thanks to perseverance and effort, I gain acceptance (that not resignation), adaptability and patience; the three pillars of my life that sustain me everyday, and specially now, to accept extreme situations and overcome them. If I have learned something in these seven years fighting the cancer is that, even if we do not apparently choose what happens to us, we can definitely choose the way we live it. I am aware that we are responsible of our thoughts, that in turn, generate emotions and feelings that take us to act in a particular way.

And since we have this capacity to generate at any time the righteous thoughts and feelings, I decide how to think and feel now that I am walking through a new sandstorm. And I do it from personal commitment, faith, acceptance and good humor”

María Quintanar Salvador

E-mail, “desde el hotelito” 26/08/2015

Summary of the book.

A morning in which the sun shone with all its splendor, Aloya left her house and walked to the beach. Ans so begins an adventure of learning in which Aloya, a very curious girl, will look for knowing her true essence.

Objective

The objective of this project is the publication and distribution of 500 copies of Aloya y el Mar written by María Quintanar Salvador **as a posthumous work and illustrated by Almudena Canet Gil in order to raise money to fight against cancer.

English teacher as a profession and angel by vocation, María wrote the book during the 12 years of her multiple stays at hospital. Leukemia found María and never left her alone teaching her to live in personal commitment, faith, acceptance and good humor”

In the end, María died this last summer leaving the writing part of the book finished. Almudena Canet Gil, teacher by training and illustrator by vocation, has finished the book with her magnificent illustrations that makes Aloya y el Mar a special and unique book to learn to know yourself on a deeper level and to accept life as it is.

As María says: “My revolution will be to love myself”

Where the money raised will go?

The profits of this project, once the costs covered, will go to the “Asociación para la lucha contra la leucemia en la Comunidad Valenciana (ASLEUVAL)” that is responsible to give love and to provide emotional and logistical support to hospital patients and their families in the hospital as in their own houses. ASLEUVAL’s goal is to make know to society the problems and needs of people suffering from cancer. ASLEUVAL wants also to improve the health care and make the population aware of the importance of becoming an organ donor.

Who are we?

Almudena Canet Gil, Amparo Jovaní, Magdalena García, Chloé Charbonnier, Alex Besalduch y Kiko Quintanar.

The people working on this Verkami to publish Aloya y el Mar are in one way or another María’s family. We have all shared with her smiles and tears. We have all learnt about the meaning of life and we know that the people who will read Aloya y el Mar will win in patience and adaptability in order to be able to live life in acceptance.

Word from the illustrator

I met María in the 2010-2011 academic year in a secondary school in Benidorm. She is an English teacher and I am a drawing teacher. We lacked time the first day we met at work to talk about life, traveling and worries. This was our starting point and Altea, our base camp to meet. María and I liked to imagine travelling and we also liked to talk about all those places we have visited alone or travelled together. Dreaming about travelling was what we like more and we laughed imagine what we would experience on those utopic trips.

Amid laughs, dreams; rough moments due to the illness that appeared and disappeared without warning and above all hope, Aloya y el Mar was bornt. We believed that doing a project together will be beautiful and Aloya y el Mar exceed all possible trips we could imagine

María started writing this story in 2016. At the beginning, it was meant to be a short-story that would be called María y el Mar but as time passed by the book ended up being called Aloya y el Mar. Aloya is María’s niece and Nanook her nephew that was born while she found the perfect end for her tale. Our best trip, Aloya y el Mar is released, María! I am deeply touched to think how happy you are!

Envisaged Scheduled

The book will come to light at the beginning of summer, that’s why people living in Spain will receive your books and rewards at the end of the summer or during fall. Those living outside Spain, you will receive your books and rewards at the beginning of 2022

Biography of the author: María Quintanar

My revolution will be to love me. Which are the challenges of life? Which is their meaning? And, what are they for?

María’s life turned upside down when in 2008 and living in Guatemala, she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. She was 32 yeas old.

As María did, Aloya (the main character of this fable) will begin a frenetic trip in deep sea, where she will swim with dolphins, she will learn form the horn’s fishes and she will meet the great fish Om. A trip to the inner being , in which the main character and writer will share, during the 12 years that last her illness, achievements and hardships.

María Quintanar Salvador, English teacher by education and angel by vocation, ended this magical tale in her last days of life. She will write the second part of this fable, Nanook and the wind, wherever she is.

Biography of the Ilustrator: Almudena Canet

Almudena Canet Gil is a passionate about the world of illustration, specially watercolor, activity that she combines with her drawing teaching profession in secondary school and college.

She has participated in several children’s literature publications, but it is Aloya y el Mar, the most important illustration project so far as it is a creative pairing with María. Almudena and María were united by a deep relation of friendship and admiration.

In this book converge feelings, emotions, admiration, acceptation, nostalgia and at the same time, the satisfaction of knowing that María smiles me back wherever she is.