Fatima Zahra grew up in the Moroccan countryside, surrounded by nature and animals, with an imagination that traveled much faster than words could follow. She fell in love with books in primary school, when her teacher lent her stories from the small classroom library. She read everything she could get her hands on, but the books that reached her came mostly from Egypt or France. None of them were Moroccan.

Years later, as a new mother, she went looking for a book to read to her first child and found herself in the same place: nothing that truly caught her imagination. So she decided to write the stories herself, the ones she wished someone had read to her.

Her first drafts begin in a notebook on the kitchen table. Most of her ideas arrive while she is washing the dishes, as if the water running over her hands sets them flowing. Her children are her muse. They help her name the characters, and together they decide on the happy ending.

Fatima Zahra holds a Master's degree in tourism and sustainability from Cadi Ayyad University. She now lives in Germany, where a child only has to rub Aladdin's lamp to find thousands of books at his feet. In Morocco, many children still grow up without books that mirror their surroundings and their everyday lives. That is what she hopes to change.

She is convinced that raising a reader starts early, with books in a child's life before they can even walk. Her wish is simple: to bring a smile to a child's face today, and to make life a little easier for the adult that child will become.