Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 1, January 2004

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Council member Licata spins tales

of Princess Bianca

By JAMES BUSH

In the space of 163 pages, Princess Bianca retrieves her mother from a far-off land, saves her father from a magical spell, and protects the Kingdom of Tiara from evil bikers, acid rain, and the dark side of "progress."

It's quite a journey for an 11-year-old girl.

Bianca is the hero of Nick Licata's children's novel "Princess Bianca and the Vandals," which the Seattle City Council member and Wallingford resident recently self-published. How did the second-term officeholder find time to write a book? Well, it's a long story, says Licata.

Aimed at an audience of kids ages eight to 12, "Princess Bianca" grew from a story Licata created for his own daughter, Eleanor Bianca Licata (known to her family as E.B.).

When E.B. was just eight, she moved to Guangzhou, China, for a year with her mother, college teacher Nora Leech. Her father, a longtime storyteller who more often than not made up her bedtime stories on the spot, came up with an idea to keep connected with his daughter despite the long distance between them.

"I sent her a tape every week that was a story," Nick Licata recalls. "I decided to link them and make them one long story." So he created the tale of Princess Bianca, the 11-year-old heir to the throne of Tiara, and the journey she took to save her family.

Not surprisingly, the tale was a hit with his original audience of one.

Later, Licata decided to try to put "Princess Bianca" in publishable form. Several years and several rewrites later, Licata did the tour of New York publishing houses, but couldn't find a buyer. In those "pre-Harry Potter days," publishers weren't convinced of the commercial appeal of fiction aimed at young adults, he says. "I put it aside and I said that if two things ever happened I'd publish it: If my daughter graduated from college and if I won a second term on City Council."

As E.B. is now a 23 year old college grad and Licata won his second term in office in 2001, it was time to get to work. He decided to self-publish the book, working with local illustrator Karen Lewis and designer Karen Steichen to create the book just the way he envisioned it. "The fun thing about publishing it myself is you get that type of control," he notes.

The final product reflects its origins. "Princess Bianca" mirrors the original serial style of Licata's original story with 44 short chapters, each with a cliff-hanger ending. "I wanted a slight twist at the end of each chapter that would leave [the reader] hanging," he says, imagining a child being read a chapter at bedtime, then drifting off to sleep wondering what will happen next.

Princess Bianca, the character, is both based on his daughter and designed to appeal to her as a reader. "I wanted a heroine who is a bit shy," he says. "I didn't want to create a superhero I wanted somebody who is normal, but who had to take on hero-like tasks."

Licata lists "Alice in Wonderland" and the "Wizard of Oz," both of which had strong female protagonists, among his influences. He also credits the movie "Edward Scissorhands" for influencing the mix of modern day action and fantasy found in "Princess Bianca." The Vandals cited in the book's title aren't the European barbarians of antiquity, but surly motorcycle thugs. A bit of myth and magic also enlivens the mix, as wood nymphs, a winged horse, and a magic ruby ring also figure into the fast-paced plot.

The story, while an adventure, is also an ecological fable, as Bianca is not only trying to save her family, but to protect her homeland of Tiara from being converted from an easygoing agrarian kingdom to a smog-choked metropolis like the nearby Kingdom of Zurbia.

Licata is seeking to market the book to environmental groups and is doing readings both in formal settings (such as Elliott Bay Books) and in people's homes. "I wanted something that would teach kids at an early age that life is about politics," he says. "It's about making choices."

As an author, Licata is confident that his readers will learn their lessons well. His book is dedicated to "the youth who protect the earth from those who would do it harm."

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For more information on Princess Bianca and the Vandals, go to www.princessbianca.org.