Celestine Bridges is a fourteen-year-old girl who is one of the main characters in Travels to Fahdamin-Ra series. She narrates the story in the first and third books, and her brother, Joel, narrates in the second and fourth.
Celestine is a little different from most of the major female characters in popular books right now. She is brown because she comes from an interracial family - her dad is black and her mom is white. The Bridges family is closely knit, and when Celestine and Joel travel to the world of Fahdamin-Ra, they go back home and get their father, so he can help. They still have a lot of adventures on their own, but from time to time, they check back with their parents.
Celestine makes friends easily, though when she encountered the Harun tribe, it was difficult at first. The Harun are male oriented, and generally look down on females. Celestine was raised by her parents to believe that females are equal to males. After an embarrassing incident with the Harun's Prince Kayin, the men of Harun gave her the respect that she deserved.
In Across the Savannah, Celestine is seen through Joel's eyes as he narrates the story. She seems capable and calm for the most part. Because she is older, she takes more responsibility for their group as they travel across the savannah, and after they arrive at the abandoned city of Afiba as well as on the island of Yahimba.
Celestine likes to observe people and the places that she visits, and stays busy being the steadying, guiding force for her younger brother Joel while they are visiting Fahdamin-Ra. She is open to new things, but does not particularly like flying because of heights, and when provoked, she is as fierce as a lionness protecting her cubs. She gets along with mostly everyone in Fahdamin-Ra except for Prince Kayin, who she finds obnoxious, Cat-ara, an annoying, abrasive girl from the Jabulani tribe, and Dede, a Harun girl who thinks herself above Celestine's Masamba friends.
Celestine has a strange relationship with Chi, a Masamba boy who is around two years older than she. He is a nice, handsome guy and fun to be around except that he has a crush on her, which is obvious to everyone, including Celestine. She is not planning on having a relationship with Chi because she is a Creator and he is one of her subjects, but Chi does not want to believe that.
Celestine is fourteen, and ready to enter high school in the fall. When the reader first meets her in Travels to Fahdamin-Ra, it is in the summer. The Bridges family soon realizes that time runs around three times as fast in Fahdamin-Ra than it does here, so the first three books take place during that summer.
Celestine is based on my daughter Callista at that age. I hope you like her as much as I liked writing about her.
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