Book excerpt: Landry Walker and Eric Jones' Pepper Page Saves the Universe is a middle-grade futuristic superhero story about a shy comic book girl-geek becoming her own superhero inspiration! The year is 2421. Awkward and shy, Pepper buries herself in the universe of the classic fictional superhero Supernova to avoid dealing with the perils of the 9th grade. But then fate intervenes when Pepper encounters a strange cat named Mister McKittens and stumbles into a volatile science experiment run by a sinister substitute teacher named Doctor Killian. Pepper is flung into another dimension, bringing her face to face with an order of cosmic beings who declare her to be the steward of their great power, champion of harmony in the universe, protector of worlds present and past. Now, in the 21st Century, Pepper finds that she herself is the real Supernova. But as Pepper soon learns, escapist fantasy and reality are two very different things.