A literary symphony of action and heart

CARDBOARD KINGDOM
by Chad Sell (and contributors)
Knopf Children’s Books, TBA
Agent: Writers House

Chad, a cartoonist and illustrator, created the “Cardboard Kingdom” several years ago: It’s a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary cardboard into fantastical homemade costumes, exploring conflicts with friends, family, and their own identity. It started with “The Sorceress Next Door,” and from there, Chat put out a call online for fellow writers and cartoon enthusiasts to help populate the kingdom with more characters, cracking open the possibilities of what this book could be…

The result, after years of collaboration, is a literary symphony of action and heart: A boy struggling with his parents’ divorce becomes a masked crusader called The Gargoyle!; a girl who feels more comfortable in a cardboard moustache confronts her father who tries to understand her “boy” costume; while another kid endearingly works to help his cardboard compatriots understand the costume he has no words to define out loud; and a bully terrorizing these neighborhood kids is secretly struggling not only with his cardboard identity, but his place in the real world. Each of these characters and their homes soon overlap with another, leading to a gloriously epic finale in which dragons, robots, knights, princesses and lemonade stands each have their moment in battle.