Book excerpt: “Look inside this world and find wonder.” —KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me and author of The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair A book arrives by Owl, left under an old fir tree in the snow. With it, a mysterious message: another world’s scientists have discovered the laws of the universe are found in—fairy tales. Is it true? Snotty—the unlikely hero of this tale—is a streetwise adolescent mastermind transported to a mystical realm where the fate of the world rests on discovering who he really is. As Snotty’s perceptions of might and right are upended, the scholarly footnotes point toward a deeper truth—that in the endless fight against evil, the toughest warriors come from the most despised group of all: the smallest, the poorest, the funniest, the snottiest. A fantastic adventure story, smart political allegory, and philosophical treatise, this is a book to be savored by adults of all ages. The History of Arcadia series tells the story of a world that was literally formed by a story, by one person discovering and claiming who she really is . . . and of the subsequent events that led first to a deceptively happy world, then to an inevitably tragic outcome, and finally to a slow rebuilding of the world on foundations more deeply and thoughtfully laid. Each book includes bonus Arcadian legends and fairy tales, and relates how the manuscript crossed the barriers between Arcadia and our own world to arrive at Exterminating Angel Press. The first two novels in the series are Snotty Saves the Day and Lily the Silent. Tod Davies lives with her husband and her two dogs at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in Boulder, Colorado and in the alpine valley of Colestin, Oregon, where she discovered Snotty Saves the Day, the first Arcadian manuscript. Illustrator Gary Zaboly is the author and illustrator of The Barack Obama Coloring Book (Dover Publications) and many books on American military and frontier history. He lives with his wife Cora in Riverdale, New York, overlooking the Hudson River.