David K. Anderson

David K. Anderson begins his Empty World series with Portal Through the Pond, a fantasy adventure built around friendship, secrecy, and disability inclusion. Thirteen-year-old Christy Walker learns from her late grandmother that the pond in her yard opens into another world and may explain her grandfather's disappearance nine years earlier. Trying to protect that secret strains Christy's friendship with Trevor Hanson. The situation becomes urgent when classmate Rob crosses the portal and nine-year-old Danny, whom Christy has been teaching herself sign language to understand, follows during the attempted rescue. Anderson published the novel in 2013. Young characters with different abilities become active participants in solving its central problem. His professional and volunteer work has involved supporting people with disabilities, while art, sculpting, and storytelling shaped his creative background. Later Empty World books continue the portal narrative. Here he grounds the fantasy mechanism in ordinary responsibilities: grief, babysitting, mistrust between friends, alongside what follows when deciding who deserves the truth.