In this week’s Third Floor Views, we talked to fashion designer and author Marina Makaron about her new book, Mashka and Mishka Get Trapped in a Rainbow, which explores gender identity.

In the book, Mashka and Mishka are siblings who can only see each other in the reflection of a mirror but can never see themselves in the mirror. One day they wake up in a mystical land with a singing sun near a skyscraper city of flowers, the Floreton. With the city’s ruler, Tiny Royal de Vasil, they must save the magical land. In the process, they find secrets about the enchanted realm as well as about themselves.

It is a twist on an old Eastern European fairy tale, and incorporates lessons about gender identity, acceptance and self-discovery.