"The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows" hasn't technically been released yet, but it has already garnered some good buzz. The illustration from the middle-school mystery served as the cover for the newest Penguin Young Readers Group catalog. (The book was published by Dial, a subsidiary of Penguin.) And now the book itself has been chosen by Amazon as one of the top books for June.
The book was written by Red Wing author Jacqueline West, an accomplished poet who grew up in western Wisconsin. It has been compared, already, to the works of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman, and is the first volume in a planned series.
The story centers on a bright and solitary girl named Olive, who moves with her parents to a big old house in a strange town. She makes friends with the resident cats, and then discovers that she can crawl inside the paintings hanging in the house...but can she crawl out again? And can the people she meets on the other side follow her back?
The book publishes June 15, and West will launch it on June 17 at 7 p.m. at the Best of Times Bookstore in Red Wing.
