Subverting convention, award-winning creators M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin pair up for an anarchic, outlandish, and deeply political saga of warring elf and goblin kingdoms.
Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom — from which no elf has returned alive in more than a hundred years. Brangwain’s host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses, blunders, and cultural misunderstandings throws these two bumbling scholars into the middle of an international crisis that may spell death for them — and war for their nations. Witty mixed media illustrations show Brangwain’s furtive missives back to the elf kingdom, while Werfel’s determinedly unbiased narrative tells an entirely different story. A hilarious and biting social commentary that could only come from the likes of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson and Newbery Honoree Eugene Yelchin, this tale is rife with thrilling action and visual humor . . . and a comic disparity that suggests the ultimate victor in a war is perhaps not who won the battles, but who gets to write the history.
M. T. Anderson is the author of Feed, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; the National Book Award–winning The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and its sequel, The Kingdom on the Waves, both New York Times bestsellers and Michael L. Printz Honor Books; Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad;Landscape with Invisible Hand; and many other books for children and young adults. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
Eugene Yelchin is a Russian-American author and illustrator of many books for children, including Breaking Stalin’s Nose, a Newbery Honor book; The Haunting of Falcon House, a Golden Kite Award winner; and The Rooster Prince of Breslov, a National Jewish Book Award winner. He has also received the SCBWI Tomie dePaola Award for illustration. He lives in Topanga, California.
This morning the National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2018 National Book Awards in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Books in Translation and Young Peoples’ Literature. Click here to browse all of the 2018 National Book Award Finalists. Selected from these lists of five finalists in each category, the winners will be […]
Today the National Book Award longlist was announced, a thrilling and diverse stack of reads including a trio of middle grade titles; an uncategorizable illustrated work from chronic genius M. T. Anderson, with cocreator Eugene Yelchin; and a nonfiction look at the Vietnam War. It also includes five YA novels: two urgent and enraging novels […]
Today the five finalists for the National Book Awards for Young People’s Literature were announced, including a book in verse about a teen finding her voice, a wrenchingly honest graphic novel memoir, and the tale of a sharecropper’s son turned hero. Here’s the full list.