A hilarious and playful romp about making books, perfect for fans of Press Here and The Book with No Pictures
THIS IS MY BOOK!
by Mark Pett
Knopf Books for Young Readers, September 2016
What happens when a writer learns that he doesn’t quite have as much control over his book as he thinks? When Mark Pett’s characters, led by a panda bear named Spike, take over his book and begin telling a story of their own, pandemonium ensues! Who’s really in charge of this book? With clever interactive elements, including a pull tab, flap, and pop-up, This Is My Book is sure to appeal to a large and varied audience—kids who will identify with the “my” aspect of the book and adults who will appreciate the humor.
Writer and illustrator Mark Pett makes books. He is the “authorstrator” of “The Boy and the Airplane”, “The Girl and the Bicycle”, “The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes”, and “Lizard from the Park”. Before books, he created the syndicated comic strips “Mr. Lowe and Lucky Cow”.
Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life. As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.
Exhausted by dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, and drifting into academic abyss, twenty-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer’s block, which threatens daily to derail his graduate funding and leave Richard poor, directionless, and desperately single.
