Here you’ll find interviews, articles, and other media coverage. Take a peek into the conversations happening around Caput Mundi!
Guest Post: What Hope Looks Like Now: Hopepunk and Stories That Refuse to Give Up
I find it fascinating how the idea of hope has evolved in children’s books over the past few decades. I grew up on stories like The Secret Garden, A Wrinkle in Time, and Anne of Green Gables—books that treated hope as a superpower, something that could heal and change the world. But then came works like A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Giver, and The Hunger Games, which began to paint hope as naïve, maybe even silly. Somewhere along the way, the idea of hope was shifting—from something brave and precious to what children were expected to outgrow....
Author Interview: The Indie View
What is the book about? Caput Mundi, the Head of the World, is an upper-middle-grade adventure fantasy about children who have to deal with the consequences of the world their parents built. The world is set in a dazzling, innovation-driven society with a prized shape-shifting metal called enarii. The story follows the children as they uncover all the cracks and lies in this seemingly perfect world and fight to set things right. At its heart, it’s about finding your voice, standing up for what’s right, and choosing hope even when the world tells you not to...
Featured on GirlTalkHQ
Challenging the “chosen one” tropes we often see in fantasy stories, Harvard alum and Korean-American author B.R. Kang instead inspires her middle grade readers to step into their own power, riffing on the notion that you can be your own hero! ‘Caput Mundi: The Head of the World: Book 1: Enarii’ (March 17th, 2026) is a fantasy debut set in an alternate Ancient Rome, with just enough familiarity to parallel modern-day America. With universal, timely themes of grappling with identity versus legacy and rebelling against oppressive systems, the first of an action-packed 5-book middle-grade series will appeal to readers of all ages, underpinned with a deep sense of hope...
Author Q&A: Deborah Kalb
Q: What inspired you to write Caput Mundi? A: I started writing Caput Mundi in 2007, while I was still in high school. I’d grown up immersed in vivid, imaginative fantasy worlds like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson. I wanted to build my own world, one that captured the same sense of wonder and escape.
Guest Post: The Multi-generational Appeal of Caput Mundi, the Head of the World
A funny thing happens when you start writing a book as a teenager and finish as an adult: the story grows with you. That’s what happened with Caput Mundi, the Head of the World. What began as a kids-against-adults fantasy slowly became something deeper. It became a story about the future challenging the past...
Guest Post: Laura's Books and Blogs: Growing with a Story
I started writing Caput Mundi: the Head of the World in 2007, which will be out in 2026. That’s 19 years—it’s a very long time to stay with one story! If I knew from the start it would take this long, I don’t think I would have ever started. But..
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Layne Mandros
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