PETE BEGLER READS HIS MIDDLE READER BOOK THE FEARLESS TRAVELERS' GUIDE TO WICKED PLACES

The Fearless Travelers' Guide to Wicked Places (Capstone Young Readers) Twelve-year-old Nell Perkins knows there is magic at work that she can't yet understand. Her mother has been taken by witches and turned into a bird. Nell must journey to get her mother back, even if it takes her deep into the Wicked Places the frightening and dangerous realm where Nightmares resides. There Nell somehow must break the spell and stop the witches from turning our world into a living nightmare. Praise for The Fearless Travelers’ Guide To Wicked Places "This magical book is as dark as a Tim Burton film -a land of walking skeletons, rains of knife blades, encounters with slave-driving clowns, and more-but there is great power (and some successful humor) in creating a world so entirely original. Bursts of modernity startle and shake the otherwise fantastical tone of the piece, and the eponymous handbook plays less of a role than perhaps it should-yet, still, this is a gripping, surreal, and utterly delightful adventure that pairs the unsettling, off-kilter wonkiness of Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl with the zinging imagination of L. Frank Baum." - Booklist Starred Review "An insecure young girl's quest for her missing mother leads her to Dreamlands, a parallel world of incredible dreams, dark nightmares, and dangerous deceptions . . .Throughout the relentlessly paced, endlessly twisting plot, remarkable Nell emerges a fearless traveler; in her own right . . . A wildly imaginative, richly textured, and complex fantasy." - Kirkus Reviews "A triumph of world building that combines familiar fantasy elements in surprising ways. . . .[Begler] successfully balances the cozy anthropomorphism of a Narnia-type land with the borderline horror of Neil Gaiman or Stephen King. The vividness of this imaginary world would undoubtedly lend itself well to a big-screen adaptation.--Foreword Reviews Pete Begler lives in Silverlake with his wife and two daughters and writes for television including the Hulu drama Chance