At 32 years old, the author, who has lived in the UK since 2019, made her debut in children's literature with "Portugal ABC," an illustrated book in Portuguese and English that combines language learning with the discovery of the country's geography and culture.

Created during her maternity leave, the book arose from the difficulty of finding bilingual works that would introduce Portugal to children from Portuguese-British families, like her son Lorenzo, now nine months old.

For each letter of the alphabet, "Portugal ABC" presents a Portuguese city or town, from north to south and the islands, with representative illustrations and short texts in Portuguese and English containing curiosities and historical facts.

Sensitive to the representation of the interior, the author included locations such as Idanha-a-Nova, in Beira Baixa, the region where she is from, reinforcing the objective of creating bridges between the book and future visits to the country.

For English letters of the alphabet that are less common in the Portuguese context, such as K, Y, and W, Soraia used activities such as karate, windsurfing, and yoga associated with real places, such as Guincho Beach or the Buddha Eden Garden.

The pages also feature a character she created, called Earth, whose hair symbolizes the planet and who interacts with readers through his own observations.

The work, which was self-published through a platform, is part of the "ABC World Explorers" series, which the author already plans to expand with titles about Spain and France.

"My idea was just to publish a book focused especially on my son, but the ideas grew, the objectives increased, and it ended up becoming a larger project," she told the Lusa news agency.

The author, who had previously written in other styles but never published, planned another book about myths and legends of Portugal and a collection about kings and queens, a fascination she has cultivated since childhood.

Soraia Mendes is one of 20 Lusophone writers who will be selling their works at the second edition of the Letras Lusas book fair in London, to be held at the Portuguese community. The organizer, journalist Alcino Francisco, estimates that more than a third are authors of children's and young adult literature, but that the diversity of themes and prose allows them to reach different types of readers or buyers.

The event, which will include authors from Portugal, Brazil, and São Tomé and Príncipe, will feature a posthumous tribute to Gilberto Ferraz (1934-2017) and various charitable initiatives, such as food drives and haircuts for donation to the British League Against Cancer.