You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This

“A triumph of imaginative storytelling that belongs on the same shelf as other offbeat classics of children’s literature like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland series.”—Booklist, starred review

“Roman’s curiosity about his family and his place within it propels him on an unsettlingly strange and seemingly disjointed journey that Starmer (Night Swimming) cleverly conjures into a cohesive, genuinely touching narrative.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Starmer’s latest calls to mind Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me in the way the intricate plot similarly—and bafflingly—comes together with surprising twists… Intriguingly bizarre and wholly original.”—Kirkus

“Starmer (Night Swimming) combines magic, whimsy, and the unexpected in this exploration of one family’s history.”—School Library Journal

“A wildly original, deliciously strange tale of family secrets, magical mysteries, and one deeply creepy toe.”—Anne Ursu, author of Not Quite a Ghost

“You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This is a twisty, mesmerizing modern fairy tale that hooked me from the very beginning—I needed to know how all the threads fit together. This mysterious fable is filled with heart and will linger with readers long after they’ve read the last page.”—Doug Cornett, author of Finally, Something Mysterious

“There is always a point, when I’m reading one of Aaron’s books, when I look up from a page I’ve just read, and I try to predict where the tale is going to wind up. (I have yet to succeed.) But I also know, every time, that there will be a later page where everything suddenly comes together in a way that is as satisfying (and often heart-shaking) as it is impossible to anticipate. This is one of those tales, but it’s more than just a gloriously twisty puzzle. It’s also a story of love and separation, of wishes and consequences that reverberate through generations, of the ways that families care for each other and the times when love and trust look different than we expect. It’s a strange and beautiful book that I read in one glorious sitting and then, if it hadn’t already been past my bedtime, would have flipped right back to the beginning to start again.”—Kate Milford, New York Times bestselling author of Greenglass House