This February, our guest will be M.T. Anderson, author of many books, including The Game of Sunken Places and The Suburb Beyond the Stars.
The Game of Sunken Places begins with an elegant gold-leafed invitation addressed to Gregory Buchanan. Gregory and his best friend Brian Thatz accept the invitation and depart to the wilds of Vermont to visit Gregory’s eccentric and wealthy uncle. Uncle Max insists on doing things the old-fashioned way. And by old-fashioned I mean the early 1900s, when boys still wore knee-socks and suffered wet tweed in stoic silence.
Brian and Gregory discover an unusual game board and are quickly swept into a weird world where the fate of two non-human races depends on the outcome of the game. In the sequel, The Suburb Beyond the Stars, Brian and Gregory are once again involved with the creatures of the game. Only this time, one side is cheating and all of human civilization is at stake, starting with an eerie suburb that has sprung up on the original game site.
The books are paced like an old-fashioned boys adventure novel, packed with quirky modern humor and then perfectly placed against a spooky, mysterious backdrop where danger lurks in the woods, under the earth, and on the green soccer fields of anti-suburbia.
In addition to The Game of Sunken Places series, M.T. Anderson has also written The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party, which won a National Book Award in 2006 and was named a Michael L. Printz Honor book in 2007. Its sequel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves also received a Michael L. Printz honor. Anderson has authored other award-winning young adult books such as Feed (which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the LA Times Book Award), Thirsty, and Burger Wuss as well as and middle school books such as Whales on Stilts, The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen, and Jasper Dash and the Flame Pits of Delaware.
The third book in the series, The Empire of Gut and Bone, is due out this summer.
Author photo by Deborah Noyes