Jūrų žvaigždė, kuri ieškojo širdies (The Starfish Looking for a Heart) – Vilnius: Alma littera, 2023. – 32 p.  

When a starfish called Little Lemon sets off to explore the Coral Sea, she meets a well-educated flatfish, Matilda. It is from this flatfish that Little Lemon finds out that she doesn’t have a heart. Little Lemon decides to ask advice from the blue whale as to where she can find a heart. On the way, she meets a variety of sea creatures and overcomes a lot of obstacles.
The author enhances the biological fact of starfish not having hearts into a metaphor and employs it to examine what comprises kindness and what being kind really means. The book also discusses the importance of friendship, ecology, and the danger of pollution to marine life.

Akvilina Cicėnaitė is labelled as a young adult author. She grew up in Vilnius but moved to the other side of the world. She received her PhD in New Zealand and has been living in Australia since 2012. She has two homes but doesn’t identify as an emigrant, because she spends most of her time… in her head, where she creates her stories. “I had to undergo a search for my identity and creativity to understand that geographical coordinates are not as important as the places you carry around in your head, the connections that link one side of the world with another, and that people living on either side are not that different.” Akvilina dreamed of being a writer since childhood, but it was by accident that she found herself in young adult literature. She started her creative career with popular stories for girls, later moving on to problem novels. Her most acclaimed novel is Niujorko respublika(Republic of New York), in which the turbulent life during the first years of the restoration of Lithuanian Independence is seen through the eyes of a teenager. The writer wants the young adult books to be a guide amidst uncertainty and to offer hope.

Contact for rights: D.Sinkeviciute@almalittera.lt

Contact for samples & other inquiries: kotryna.pranckunaite@lithuanianculture.lt