By Lucero De Alva

Is there a planet where the evils of life and mortality do not exist? The question, although a nonsensical one, nonetheless holds a deep and philosophical meaning. Pita, the mind behind the question, often wondered about a place in the galaxy where there is no poverty, injustice, hunger, and violence. Her science teacher, happy with Pita’s curiosity, gave her a deep and detailed explanation about the planets, stars, constellations, gravity, space, and the entire solar system. The scientific explanations provided by the teacher struck Pita’s belief system hard, and for a while she stopped wondering about escaping from Earth’s atmosphere and starting a new life on some other planet.

Pita

Pita was now eleven years old, and just as much as she loved the idea of flying to some other planet, she loved sunflowers. Since childhood she had looked up to these flowers, which always, for some reasons, turned their heads toward the seething Sun. She could not decide if the love she held for these flowers came from the fact that they were just simply beautiful or because, when she was growing up and learning new things, she found out that sunflowers always follow the path of the Sun. “Were every human to follow the light of their hearts, how wonderful the life would turn out to be!” she thought.

Pita was born in a city located in the desert of northern Mexico. She was blessed with a family that thought of her before itself. And although they had only a little material wealth in their vault, they always managed to provide Pita with all the basic amenities of life. Pita was the oldest of four children, and her best friend was a cat called Polo. Her life was a happy one, but she knew that many other children in the world were not as fortunate as she was, and so she had decided to change the world into a better place. She continuously pestered her family, asking, “How can I make a difference in the world?” and they always gave the same answer: “Many have tried changing it, but the world has remained the same. So you are better worrying about your life and enjoying it as much as you can.”

Pita, at such a tender age, and merely for the sake of love, tried dissecting flowers to learn more about their workings. In doing so, she treated flowers like machines, for it was beyond her childish brain to fathom the mysteries of the universe. Besides, like grown-ups, she tended not to call worldly happenings divine, and her brain kept calculating the scientific process behind the workings of the universe. Pita was a lively creature, as every child is, but she was lively in a more productive sense. Wherever she went, she thought it necessary to take her notebook, pencil, and magnifying glass. She was a universal detective, who exacted tons of happiness from the planet’s mysteries, and she was terrified of becoming a grown-up. She thought they were so immature. They even stopped playing and began to worry more about facts other than the ones that really matter, like collecting insects or playing mamalecheor escondidas with their friends

(The writer is an author of a series of children’s books that will be released in these upcoming months; here she’s given fragments from her first book, PITA).