The Real Boy

National Book Award Longlist * Bank Street Children's Book Committee Best Book of the Year

"Beautifully written and elegantly structured, this fantasy is as real as it gets."--Franny Billingsley, author of Chime

The Real Boy, Anne Ursu's follow-up to her widely acclaimed and beloved middle grade fantasy Breadcrumbs, is a spellbinding tale of the power we all wield, great and small.

On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy named Oscar. Oscar is a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the village, and spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his master's shop grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscar's world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable. And Oscar does not quite fit in it.

But now that world is changing. Children in the city are falling ill, and something sinister lurks in the forest. Oscar has long been content to stay in his small room in the cellar, comforted in the knowledge that the magic that flows from the forest will keep his island safe. Now even magic may not be enough to save it.

Erin McGuire is an illustrator of picture books and middle grade novels, including Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, the Nancy Drew Diaries series, and Sleeping Beauty by Cynthia Rylant. When not drawing, she enjoys reading, cooking, and camping. Erin lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and two cats. Visit her online at www.emcguire.net.

Anne Ursu is the author of the acclaimed novels The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, which was longlisted for the National Book Award. The recipient of a McKnight Fellowship Award in Children's Literature, Anne is also a member of the faculty at Hamline University's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an ever-growing number of cats.