When Charlie McButton Lost Power

Since 1991, Suzanne Collins has been busy writing for children’s television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows. Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days. While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try. Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party. What you might find…? Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/​war series, The Underland Chronicles. She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard.

Mike Lester is an illustrator and political cartoonist who often has cartoons in publications like Time magazine. The books he has illustrated for Random House include A Is for Salad, Cool Daddy Rat, and The Night Before the Night Before Christmas. He lives in Rome, Georgia.