A children’s book by a local real-estate agent that parallels her family’s daring escape from 1980s communist Czechoslovakia is gaining popularity by leaps and bounds.
That’s not surprising, some might say, since the illustrated fable chronicles the adventures of a certain frog named Poppet.
Author Anna Ashton recently told the Rotary Club of Taylor “Frog in the Glass Jar” is a bestseller on Amazon. com with its bright, eyecatching illustrations and message of hope for young people.
Ashton hopes the book provides inspiration to children to use their imaginations and overcome their own challenges.
“I want my story to encourage them to think outside of the box and not to be afraid of being different,” Ashton said.
People repeatedly asked Ashton, who works at Pure Realty in Taylor, when she was going to write the story of her family’s journey to the United States.
After years of questions, Ashton began to consider the idea seriously, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that writing the story as a children’s book occurred to her.
Ashton noticed during the pandemic how children suffered from a lack of camaraderie with their friends.
“I realized there was a need for a book to motivate them, to give them hope, to let them be children and enjoy this playful time of life,” she said.
Poppet, the main character in Ashton’s story, is an amphibian who’s not allowed to jump into the pond and play. He and the other frogs are only permitted to walk in circles around it, under the watchful eye of the big boss frog Bob.
In Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, Ashton said, “There were lots of restrictions, lots of government overlook, lots of rules about what you could do, where you could travel.”
It was a very controlled environment, just like the jar where the frogs in Ashton’s story live.
According to her author bio, Ashton in 1985 was with her then-husband and two young children living in Slovakia, a satellite state of the Soviet Union. It became independent in January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
Once Poppet realizes he’s trapped in a glass jar, all he thinks about are ways to escape. Ashton said she and her husband began to discuss leaving their beloved country when their children started school.
“We realized they were learning a lot more about the history of the Soviet Union than our own. My husband, especially, disagreed with the system and didn’t want to raise the children in that kind of environment, in a communist regime,” Ashton
said. They decided to flee the country, but, just as Poppet learned, it’s hard to escape a glass jar, especially when others want to stop you.
“You had to do everything in secrecy, you couldn’t tell anyone, because people would spy on you and report you to the police. Once you were reported to the police, they would come and take your passport, and you’d never leave the country again,” Ashton said.
An opportunity to get out arose sooner than expected because of their young son’s severe allergies. A doctor, unaware of the family’s plans, recommended their offspring journey to the beach for sea air.
The closest beach was on the Adriatic Sea in Yugoslavia, which was then a neutral country, and the Czechoslovakian government approved the family’s special visas.
Ashton and her family left without telling friends or family where they were going and what they planned.
“We just told them we were going on vacation to the mountains,” Ashton said.
While Poppet and his father build a rocket to break open their jar, once in Yugoslavia, Ashton and her family managed to get transit visas to Austria and declared political asylum.
Like Poppet and his family, they managed to escape their jar into a bright, new world.
On Dec. 5, 1985, Ashton and her family drove to the Austria-Yugoslavia border, only to be told by the Yugoslavian guards their visas had “expired.”
But that didn’t stop the family of four. They got in line behind another vehicle seeking entry from Yugoslavia to Austria – the latter country not under communist rule.
Ashton said as the guards opened the gate for the vehicle in front to drive through, her family’s car sped through the gate before it closed. They arrived in New York City three months later and never looked back.
Ashton is working on a sequel to “Frog in the Glass Jar” where Poppet and his family seek opportunities in their new home.
In the meantime, Ashton is having the book translated into Slovak, Russian, Armenian, Spanish and Portuguese.
For more, visit annaashtonauthor. com.
