How Valencia has a way of unlocking unexpected versions of you. For Lana, it was a children’s book.

It’s happened to all of us: you uproot your life, land somewhere new, and in the gap between who you were and who you’re becoming, something unexpected surfaces. For Lana Arcon, a Canadian living in Valencia, it took the shape of a children’s book series.

“I had this idea to capture our stay… I didn’t know how to capture it, how to anchor it into a lifetime memory,” she says. And so she did.

Not just for reading but for creating moments of connection.

Bunny and Turtle Adventures — co-created with her sons Stefan, 9, and Maximus, 6 — is a vibrant, interactive picture book for ages four to eight, set against the real backdrops, real people, and real memories of a family trip to Croatia. The two main characters? A turtle and a bunny, drawn by the boys themselves.

But this isn’t just a pretty book. Lana was deliberate about making it interactive — the kind of read-aloud experience that gets kids asking questions, searching for hidden characters on every page, and learning a few Croatian words without realising they’re being taught anything. There’s also a layer of humour in there for the adults doing the reading at 8pm, which, if you’re a parent, you’ll appreciate more than you’d expect.

The book was tested the best possible way: in actual classrooms. Lana, Stefan, and Maximus read it aloud together — the boys voicing the bunny and the turtle, Lana as narrator — and watched kids who’d never met them get completely absorbed. That’s when she knew it worked.

It’s planned as a series, each book rooted in a different country, a different culture, a handful of words you wouldn’t learn anywhere else. A Valencia one may even be quietly in the works.

All It Takes is the Leap

What strikes you talking to Lana is how much of this project is really about showing her kids what’s possible — that an idea, properly chased, becomes a real thing you can hold. “Even if I don’t sell one copy, the fact that I was able to sit there with my kids and really host that reading session — that was really for me.”

She learned that lesson here, in this city, in the breathing room that migration sometimes, unexpectedly, gives you.

Bunny and Turtle Adventures is available on Amazon.