Carolina Ugaz Moran, Author of 'Aline and the Blue Bottle,' Featured on Mark Bishop Radio Show: What if your family was entrusted with the keeping of a deep and powerful secret? Are there other worlds, filled with more power and magic than one could possibly imagine? And what if everything you knew about yourself, your family, and your world suddenly changed? Debut author Carolina Ugaz-Morán weaves these questions throughout her spellbinding fantasy novel Aline and the Blue Bottle, a coming-of-age story of identity, discovery, and the power of love, family, and friendship.Aline and the Blue Bottle, the award winning first volume of Carolina Ugaz-Morán's captivating middle grade fantasy series, is told through the eyes of Aline. A misfit who is bullied and ostracized, Aline is different than her peers. Though well loved by her mother, grandmother, and dogs, Aline longs for acceptance and friendship and struggles to understand why she doesn't fit in anywhere"You are very unique and beautiful," Aline's grandmother tells her. "Being unique is a very good thing."Ugaz-Morán, who was born in Spain, and lived in Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Peru before moving to the United States at age 14, knows what it is like to be an outsider. "As a child, I moved a lot and was often bullied," she says. "The only constant was my family…Now I have a family of my own and they are my constant. There is a lot to be said about the simple power of love and family."But Aline's family is far more unique than she could begin to guess, the keepers and guardians of a long-hidden secret—Aline herself. On the evening of her twelfth birthday, everything changes when her grandmother suddenly tells her she's in danger and drags her through a portal into a magical world. Here Aline realizes that she has been surrounded by secrets her whole life and that nothing, including her family, is what she thought. She learns about the One World, the evil warlock Dashiok, and the magical war that shattered the One World into eight kingdoms.She discovers that she possesses strong powers which might be the key to defeating Dashiok, if she can unlock them. But before she has even identified all of her powers, much less mastered them, Aline and twelve other Quest Carriers are forced to set off in search of a mysterious and powerful blue bottle which Dashiok seeks to control. Can Aline and the Quest Carriers find the hidden bottle? Will Aline be able to identify and master her powers in order to protect the Quest Carriers? When the forces of darkness attack, can they unite their powers to defeat their foes?

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